


The Birth of the Mocking Jay

by Kitshunette



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Alternate Universe - Hunger Games Setting, Hunger Games, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-30
Updated: 2014-02-07
Packaged: 2018-01-06 17:55:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 12
Words: 52,343
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1109842
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kitshunette/pseuds/Kitshunette
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It takes a lot of time and people to change History. Some of them get to leave their mark in burning fire on the page; others just get forgotten in their shadows, backstage actors whose importance will probably stay ignored and die with the memories of the ones who knew.<br/>The story of the Girl on Fire has already been told multiple times, and she will probably still live for a long time after her death, in people’s memories, the source of a legend, immortal and forever.<br/>What I want to tell you about is a story that happened a long time ago; and even if they never got their names written down in this ark of History, they had a decisive role in the birth of the Rebellion.</p><p>This is the story of Levi and Erwin.<br/>This is the story of the birth of the Mocking Jay.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> I tried to respect the "who's older than who" thing, but other than that everyone's age has been shamelessly taken and changed to suit my needs *coughs*
> 
> ((This is also dedicated to kuriixcurry because I can))  
> 

_It takes a lot of time and people to change History. Some of them get to leave their mark in burning fire on the page; others just get forgotten in their shadows, backstage actors whose importance will probably stay ignored and die with the memories of the ones who knew._

_If you ask them, most people will tell you that the Rebellion started when the Girl on Fire volunteered as a tribute at the start of the 74 th Hunger Games. It was a decision she took on the heat of the moment, probably without really thinking about the consequences, just desperate to protect her little sister from the atrocities of the arena._

_A hotheaded decision that started it all.  
A series of more or less hotheaded decisions that led to the final outcome of the Rebellion._

_The main actors got the fame and knowledge they deserved, all shining in Katniss’s aura.  
She was strong, and she did great things. She had a hard life and lost a lot, but still managed to get back up every time._

_But the story of the Girl on Fire has already been told multiple times, and she will probably still live for a long time after her death, in people’s memories, the source of a legend, immortal and forever._

_What I want to tell you about is a story that happened a long time ago, and which started the same way. A child making a decision without completely thinking the consequences through, just to protect the ones he cared about. A decision that led him to meet people who would change his life, and whose lives would be changed because of him. And even if they never got their names written down in this ark of History, they had a decisive role in the birth of the Rebellion._

_This is the story of Levi and Erwin._

_This is the story of the birth of the Mocking Jay._

*

 

Levi had a lot of problems. Most – if not all of them – included his young age, his short height, his inversely proportional responsibilities and basically the fact that they were leaving in the crappiest district of Panem. His mother passed away after Mikasa’s birth, and his father died in the coalmine when he was only eleven, leaving him and his seven-year-old sister in a cold and dark little house with rumbling stomachs and no means of income.

It wasn’t an unusual situation. Children left behind, orphans, unable to take care of themselves. Most of them lost their roofs very shortly – if they even had one to begin with –, either kicked out by robbers or by a sighing landlord welcoming another family in the place. During the long months of winter, it wasn’t rare for one to find a tiny body curled up at their doorstep, frozen and lifeless.

Levi refused that fate, for him or for his sister. They fought. Both of them. They had to.

And somehow, their small family ended growing up with other starving kids, attracted to the warm light and fire burning in their house. They were afraid, a short life of abuse deeply carved in their little hearts. They were scared and hungry and didn’t even have the strength to cry anymore, and Levi welcomed them in their home. He saw their tiny cheeks regaining colours, and their faces light up at the sight of a warm soup, no matter how bland it was or how little they could get. These children were a heavy additional burden on their survival rate, but he let them stay. He cleaned their clothes. He made blankets for them out of whatever he could find. The eldest helped him the best they could; Reiner made sure the youngest didn’t get hurt when they went outside, Marco read stories for them and kissed them goodnight, and Mikasa was a silent presence in the house, comforting and ready to strike if something or someone threatened anyone of them.

One day, he came back home to find the mayor’s wife waiting in front of the door. Mrs Smith was a tall and beautiful lady, someone who was born in the sewers and clawed her way up to the comfortable life she now enjoyed. She was a survivor, as much as he was. And Levi could still see the wildfire burning in her eyes.

She smiled at him, and he wondered for a brief second if his mother smiled like this too. He couldn’t remember. He was too young.

He was still too young, and an uncomfortable weight started to settle in his stomach when he realized that Mrs. Smith was probably here to tell them to leave the place, since he hadn’t paid any rent of any sort after his father died. Actually, he had wondered why it had taken so long to happen. But he had kind of started dreaming over the hope that they might have just forgotten him and prayed to the sky and clouds and to whatever almighty being that might be living up there that the situation didn’t change. Apparently, that was too much to ask. _Stupid clouds._

It didn’t mean he was going to let it be, though. The cold days were upon them, and he refused to see the kids sleeping outside, shivering from cold – dying one after another. He was determined to keep that place, at least until spring, even if he had to yell or fight … or beg. There was a point where the rest of his dignity just didn’t matter anymore.

Mrs. Smith moved closer, and crouched in front of him. He looked up at her with a fierce expression, ready to do whatever it took to protect his little family. To his surprise, she just laughed softly, amused, and handed him a scroll of paper.

“Gift from an anonymous donator,” she said. “Happy birthday, Levi.”

Levi unrolled the paper and looked down at it for a few stunned seconds, and then up again. The tall lady had stood up and was already walking away, her simple fur coat barely a moving shadow against the snow.

“Thank you,” he called out.

Mrs. Smith slightly turned her head back, and nodded, before turning over again.

“Good luck.”

 

The two words rang loudly in Levi’s mind long after. After reading it again, he carefully rolled his new title deed back, and considered what had just happened, trying to wrap his mind around why and what and no seriously, _what_. He sure like hell wasn’t going to complain about the fact that one of his greatest problems somehow just got miraculously solved, but he still didn’t get _why_. And he hated feeling indebted to anyone, even if he was technically indebted to half of the district for their little donations to his and the kids’ stomachs. After a few minutes of fruitless furious thinking, he just gave up and decided to take things as they were coming. Mrs. Smith hadn’t explicitly said that she paid for the house, nor did she ask for anything in return, right? So that wasn’t a problem and he would certainly have a lot of time to ponder over it later if something else happened.

He settled his brain on this last decision, and leaned forward from his bed to take a little box he was hiding under it. Only Mikasa knew its existence. The case only contained one item, the wedding picture of their parents, looking at each other, smiling and happy. Levi looked for a long time at their loving faces, trying to remember what they sounded like, what their little habits were. He felt something tighten in his throat when he realized that he couldn’t remember most of it, that the last remnants of his parents were fading away along his untrustworthy memory. With a heavy heart, he put the newly gained title deed inside, and closed the lid sharply.

 

It was his birthday. He had completely forgotten it.

It was his birthday, and he was now twelve year-old.

A part of him rejoiced over the fact that he could at least buy some tesserae so it would significantly ease their lives. Him, Mikasa, and three little cousins who had come to live with them. That made five portions, it was far from negligible.

But another part of him looked around the room and wondered if he would still be here the year after.

It was his 12th birthday.

And the 24th Hunger Games were coming.

 

*

 

“Why are you even doing this? They are going to be miserable again later, anyway.”

Elena Smith startled, but slowly finished hanging her coat on the wall before turning around to face her son.

“How did you find out?” she sighed.

“There are children drawings in your purse. And I’m one hundred per cent sure I didn’t make them.”

“And what exactly were you doing with my purse, young man?” she sharply asked.

“Father was looking for the cellar’s keys.” her son replied with the same tone.

“Oh.”

They stared at each other, Erwin taking notice of the brief spark of anxiety that appeared in his mother’s eyes, before she took control of her expression again.

“He doesn’t really mind, though,” he quickly added. “Neither do I, we have way enough for ourselves anyway. But is it really worth it? It won’t serve them on the long run.”

Mrs. Smith didn’t reply immediately, studying her son’s features. He hadn’t started his growth spurt yet, but she was pretty sure that he was going to be a tall and handsome man in a few years.

 _If he lives until then,_ a vicious voice whispered in her head. She brushed it off quickly and softly smiled at her boy.

“Remember the book I always read to you when you were little?”

Erwin blinked a few times.

“The one with the alien time traveler?”

Elena nodded encouragingly. The boy blinked some more and frowned.

“I remember, but what’s your point?”

His mother looked intensely at him for a few seconds, then crouched down without breaking eye contact. Erwin looked down at her, curious.

“ “Because every time you see them happy you remember how sad they're going to be. And it breaks your heart. Because what's the point in them being happy now if they're going to be sad later? ” ” she said in a quiet voice.

Something sparkled in the boy’s eyes.

“ “The answer is, of course, because they are going to be sad later.” ” he replied softly.

Elena smiled, and Erwin smiled back at her, satisfied by the answer. The lady’s heart warmed when she saw his eyes lit up with peaceful joy along his lips, and they just looked at each other for a few moments, enjoying that moment of silent exchange.

“Now, don’t you have homework to do young man?” she finally asked with a feinted severe voice while patting her son’s shoulder with genuine compassion. She had been to the district school too, and she remembered how dull and boring the homework always was. After a certain point, they more or less all consisted in praising the Capitol in one way or another, rather than teaching the children actual useful things they could use in life.

Erwin pouted and frowned more, but eventually sighed and slowly climbed the stairs with heavy steps. Mrs. Smith couldn’t help but feel amused; even with everything going on, her son still had a childish part in him.

_Even with everything going on._

Her smile faded, and she looked at the big framed family picture they had hung on the living-room’s wall. They had taken it just before Erwin turned twelve, two years ago. It was her husband’s idea, and he never gave a reason for it.

He didn’t need to give one, they all knew why.

_Just in case they never had the occasion later._

Mayor Anthony Smith wasn’t a bad man at all, otherwise Elena wouldn’t have married him in the first place. But she knew what the Capitol did to people, having assisted to a few special parties where all mayors were invited herself. She saw how all these fancy people looked down at them, the peasants from district 12. She saw some of them pointing fingers at their sober clothes and laughing behind their heavy fans, golden and silver teeth sparkling in the artificial light.

She saw how it affected her husband, how he clenched his teeth before forcing smiles and pleasant compliments on his lips.

He never really talked about it, but he just started looking at everything differently. Elena could see the obvious dissatisfaction on his face whenever they got dressed for one of those events, or when they received a new piece of furniture. But there wasn’t much he could do about it, and he himself said that he didn’t like the clothes they were wearing in the Capitol. Too colourful. Too superficial. I don’t want to look like a painted banana, he had said.

This situation made Elena sad. She understood her husband, and she hadn’t married him for money or comfort, but because she loved him.

It seriously started to scare her, though, when he began bringing Erwin to the parties. Their son was barely ten, and she feared that he would get swallowed by the shiny lethal things of the Capitol. But Erwin was incredibly excited to go, and she didn’t have the heart to say no to his bright innocent smile. She just hoped that nothing was going to go wrong, that Erwin would be able to handle everything.

He did.

He did it way too well, actually.

Erwin had inherited both of their charisma, charm and intelligence. After a few moments of surprise and stunned silence, he had started swimming among the guests with an incredible ease, and participated in conversations as if he had known each of the other participants for a long time. People leaned down and smiled at him, giving him cakes and sweets, asking him his name and age and what he wanted to do later.

“I believe Erwin would make a fine Head Peacekeeper if he could join the Training Course, don’t you think so?” Mr. Smith had replied in his behalf, all smiling and seductive.

The boy had given his father a surprised look, but had quickly hid it. People then proceeded in agreeing with him and lamenting over how sad it was that getting a citizenship of 2 was an impossible thing for outer districts, but that Erwin was such a cute and smart boy, and that he could still bring them pride and honour by being a Victor, and seriously, we haven’t seen a volunteer from 12 since the beginning of the Games, maybe he could be the first when he’s in age?

The casualness with which these people with their bright-red painted lips and clothes and fake smiles suggested that horrible thing made Elena feel sick. Erwin’s answer made her want to cry.

“Oh, then maybe should I bring you a glass of wine in case you consider being my future sponsor?” he laughed.

She looked at her son joking about going to the arena and murdering other kids for the entertainment of the privileged people of the Capitol. She listened to her husband telling everyone how Erwin would totally exterminate his opponents and win the Games. Mrs. Smith wasn’t someone to let her fears get the best of her, but this was just too much for her. She was seriously considering excusing herself and leaving to calm her nerves somewhere in a dark corner of the garden when she crossed Erwin’s eyes.

Despite the bright smile on his lips, his piercing blue eyes had no joy in them.

And silently calling out for help.

Elena had spent her whole life building an armor around her, crushing people who called her weak and mocked her. But she didn’t see any other way out of it. In this moment, her dignity just looked like such a petty thing to her eyes.

She collapsed on the floor, frankly fanning her face with her hand and breathing heavily. People around her started to scream and panic, and Erwin and Anthony came to her, telling people that it was okay and that they were taking care of this. She saw disbelief in her husband’s eyes – he knew her too well to fall for her trick – but rolled with it, and she was grateful for him for that. She felt Erwin squeezing her hand while she was being carried away, and turned her face just to see him silently mouthing “thank you” in her direction, gratitude filling his eyes.

She squeezed his little hand back, and after a few minutes, they were on board the train taking them back to their home.

 

*

 

Levi was waiting in the middle of a small clearing, absently rolling and unrolling a piece of dirty paper in his hands. He always felt terrible for not being able to repay people for the small things they did for him, from sparing a loaf of burned bread to accepting to look after the kids when he and the eldest children were out trying to find dinner. But he felt absolutely awful whenever he went to pick up the basket of fresh food Mrs. Smith left for them every two weeks.

The first time happened a few days after his birthday and their first encounter. At first, Levi’s deep confusion surfaced again in front of this sudden income of generosity, but the old lady living next to them told him about Elena Smith’s past, about her seeing her siblings starving to death one after another or killed by soldiers from the Capitol during the Uprising, about seeing her older sister later being reaped and gutted in the arena. About how despite her dire situation, she still found time to take care of their sick uncle, providing him comfort until the very last moment.

Levi remembered the burning fire he saw in the lady’s eyes that first time, and wondered how he could possibly pay her back for what she did for them. This kind of thought always led him from one kind deed to another and made him go nuts with helplessness. He was grateful he never had the strength to actually start a list, because he was pretty sure looking at it would be enough to make him bang his head in a wall. He then remembered the decision he took while realizing that the possible violent end of his life could be sooner than he expected, and decided to think about paying back later. He was a master procrastinator in his way. He would find a solution when the time came, right.

 

Mrs. Smith always put the food at the same place, at the same time, provided that it wasn’t raining. After two or three times, the kids just decided on their own to produce small things to thank her. Levi always dropped the gifts on the floor a few minutes before their benefactor’s expected arrival: a bouquet of carefully picked flowers, a drawing when they managed to smuggle some extra paper from school, even a wobbly mud sculpture once. Marco had complimented Jean for his well-made bear, which had led to a lot of pouting and sulking from the younger boy who hissed that it was supposed to be a smiling goddess.

He never showed himself to talk to her. It just didn’t feel right. He realized it could be seen as kind of creepy, but he just hid somewhere nearby and watched the blonde lady dropping off her basket and picking up whatever he left. She always smiled softly, taking a moment to look at the childish work before carefully putting it in her pulse and leaving. Levi couldn’t help but wonder what it must feel like to be able to call her “mum”. He distantly remembered that she had a son and that he saw him several times at school – when he was still going to school, that is –, a blonde boy two years older than him, with blue eyes and a disarming smile, who had as much effect on girls as on boys. Well, at least on him. But it was just a very distant memory from another time, and he couldn’t remember having ever talked to him anyway. He just hoped that he realized how lucky he was.

Levi unrolled the paper one last time, and read again the few neat lines written on it, a short poem the kids came up with. Armin had made great progress in his writing, and he felt ridiculously proud of it. The blonde boy was also trying to turn Eren’s illegible symbols to something less painful to read, under the constant supervision of Mikasa. Levi always smiled for himself whenever he saw those three chatting and playing together, or cuddled against each other under their big blanket. Even if they rarely enjoyed a moment of peace from their rumbling stomachs, just having the kids’ little faces and smiles around was enough for Levi to feel peaceful. And happy.

He rolled the poem back again, and wrapped a thread around it before carefully putting it on the floor and silently walking to his watching post a few meters away. Mrs. Smith arrived a few minutes after, and laughed quietly while reading the poem – not in a mean way, probably just amused by the complete lack of actual poetry in it. She then rolled the paper again and headed back to her house, and Levi looked at her lean figure disappearing in the woods. He came out from his hideout and picked up the basket, checking what was in it. His lips slightly curled up when he saw the stack of potatoes in it. Sasha would be dying from happiness tonight, and the thought of having a good meal with the kids just lightened his heart in the quickest and most efficient way. Tonight, they weren’t going to fall asleep at the sound of the others’ stomachs, and even if it only lasted for a few days, it was worth it every time.

But he knew that their little routine wouldn’t last forever. Something was bound to go completely sideways, and every time images from the Games flashed in scarlet light in front of his eyes. The clock was ticking until his first Reaping, and the bad feeling he had only added to his growing anxiety.

He was so wrong, though.

The Games had nothing to do with the blood that was spilled.

He wished it had.

 

He wouldn’t have felt so powerless.  


	2. Chapter One

 

 

It was another beautiful mid-spring day; the sun was hot and high in the blue sky, the wind was blowing just enough to freshen up the people dwelling in the streets, its breath carrying delicious scents of freshly baked bread and pies.

It would have been an even more beautiful day if Jean’s stomach wasn’t playing a constant solo drums music piece, and making him want to jump on every piece of food he saw and devour it like a savage. But Levi had told them that they couldn’t do it. It just wasn’t how things worked there, and Jean feared Levi’s disapproving and disappointed piercing look more than the everlasting complaints of his stupid stomach. He once saw him giving that look to Sasha after she took a potato without permission from the market. The girl had quickly put it back and apologized to the merchant without Levi even needing to phrase his thoughts.

No one wanted to disappoint Levi.

That was just how they loved and respected (and feared) the barely older boy who saved them all after their parents either died or abandoned them.

Also, Levi’s little sister Mikasa was scary as fuck and currently staring at him as if she could read his mind contemplating treachery. A cold shiver went down his spine, and he tore his gaze away from the bakery’s window. When he turned back in her direction, the girl had disappeared. He let out a sigh of relief.

Seriously though, he was ready to kill someone to get something to eat.

“Here.”

Marco handed him something that was once probably supposed to be a sausage in someone’s mind, but went through two nuclear wars and a trip in the heart of the Sun. It looked awful and must have tasted even more awfully.

Jean took it gratefully and bit hungrily in the carbonized meat. Even the horrible burned taste was like a nectar to him. It was gone in no time.

His stomach rumbled, and he mentally told it to shut the fuck up.

“I’m sorry, Gunther’s business is going through a hard time too, he couldn’t give us more,” Marco said, sounding truly apologetic.

Jean shot him a dark stare, irritated.

“Stop apologizing, it’s not like it was your fault that the crops died and that some disease is killing the cattle, right,” he mumbled. Marco was the coolest boy he knew and he hated when he acted as if the bad things were a result of him doing something wrong.

It brought a small smile to the lips of the older boy.

“I know, I just thought that it’s your birthday so I wanted to get something special for you, you know.”

Little butterflies most definitely didn’t start to flutter around in Jean’s unhappy stomach. He turned his head away.

“Not a big deal really,” he brushed it off. “I bet that being alive is already a gift in itself. I mean, how many kids don’t make it to their eighth birthday, right?” He stopped himself from adding “Even though I sometimes wonder if they are not happier than us.”

He dared a quick glance at Marco, and regretted it immediately. Marco was flashing him the most beautiful smile Jean’s young eyes had ever been granted to see, and part of him just wanted to drop to his knees and bless him for existing and accepting to be his pitiful person’s friend, which was obviously never going to happen.

Marco cupped his face with his big warm hands and dropped a kiss on his lips. They weren’t sure what it was really supposed to mean, but they saw Reiner and Bertholdt do it so they wanted to try it too, and it felt good so they kept doing it from time to time. Once, Levi saw them, and Jean feared for a moment that it was something that they weren’t supposed to do; but then their surrogate big brother just turned his eyes away, and Jean could swear that he was smiling. Which was probably a hallucination because Levi just so rarely smiled. Ymir said that it was because he had seen monsters that took his smile away, and Jean now slept with his mouth covered just in case.

“Let’s go home,” Marco said, letting his face go and taking his hand instead.

Jean liked holding hands with Marco, as much as kissing with Marco or sleeping against him. He was always warm and he smelled like the soap Levi forced them to wash with at least once a week. Jean had no idea where he managed to find such a supply of soap while everyone was struggling to find even enough food to calm the cries of the youngest ones.

Ymir said that he made them out of his enemies’ livers and fat.

Jean didn’t know who these enemies were but he was resolute not to become one of them.

“Okay,” he replied, leaning a bit closer to Marco. He really liked Marco, and he knew that Marco liked him too.

The world sucked, but this was enough to make him happy.

 

*

           

As soon as Reiner and Bertholdt came back from their errand to the market, Levi knew that something was wrong. Bertholdt’s tall and lean body was shaking violently, and his eyes were wide-open, absent and lost somewhere in nightmarish memories. Next to him, Reiner was trying to look calm, probably mostly to provide strength and comfort to the other boy and keep him from completely breaking down. But Levi could see that he wasn’t doing much better in the inside.   

They also came back empty-handed, which was really unusual, even with the hard times going on. Reiner never accepted to come home before finding something to help them pass another day, it just wasn’t written in his DNA.

The blond boy’s golden eyes met with Levi’s, and he immediately dropped the laundry on the spot before stepping in front of the two kids and firmly setting a hand on their shoulders, a comforting anchor to reality. They both had already overcome him in height, and Levi wasn’t sure whether to feel proud or throw a silent fit because it wasn’t fair, but he had to resign over the fact that they were probably going to keep on growing – especially Bert, who threatened to reach some ridiculous height later. But for the moment, they were still his little brothers. And they were scared. He didn’t know what was going on, but he had never seen such an amount of distress in always-so-in-control-and-comforting-Reiner’s eyes.

“What happened?” he asked slowly, trying to convey as much calm he could in his voice. He wasn’t sure it had come out as he wanted it to, but Reiner seemed to relax a bit.

“Th-The new Peacekeepers,” he started, his voice shaking. “Erd tried to trade some left-over with them like he always did with the precedent garrison, but they – they –”

“They killed him,” Bertholdt whispered next to him. Levi looked at him, but the tall boy was still staring out at nothing, even barely blinking. He heard Reiner breathing in sharply.

“They said it was against the law and that he was to be punished. Th-They took him to the central place and tied him to the spot and whipped him and we could hear him scream but they weren’t stopping and someone alerted his parents and they arrived and begged them to stop but the Peacekeepers said that they weren’t done yet and they just kept on and on and on and when they were done Erd was – he was –”

Levi didn’t ask him to finish, and just pulled them forwards. It was quite an awkward position, but after the first second of surprise, the boys let their heads rest on their big brother’s narrow shoulders, none of them saying a word. Levi slowly stroked their backs while processing what they just told him and its consequences, frowning deeply.

It was very bad news. The butchers were in a bad situation, but they still accepted to take in the kids for some little work in exchange of a few left-over, which was already more than good enough for Levi. Erd was a good friend too, a bit older than him, and sometimes dropped by the house with his sister Petra to play with the kids or read them a story. Everyone loved them.

And now Erd was gone.

           

The previous garrison of Peacekeepers had been here for a very long time, and even if they probably showed cruelty at the beginning, it was years and years ago. As far as Levi could remember, they had been quite indulgent, and some of them even used to leave a rest of soup when their superiors weren’t looking. They knew how life was, out here in District 12. And no one really cared anyway about what happened in the poorest district of the country.

Maybe the new garrison would come to the same realization and change their behavior with time. But for the moment, they would have to say goodbye to any possible generosity or convenient blind eye from the Peacekeepers. It wasn’t going to do any good to their already hard situation, but Levi wasn’t going to risk any of the kids’ lives for half an onion. They would have to find another way.

           

When the rest of the gang came home after their homework time at school, Levi didn’t need to give an explanation as to why they were now forbidden to even approach the Peacekeepers. News travelled fast in the dirty streets of the district.

 

That night, there was no bedtime story, and Levi put out the light in a heavy silence, only disturbed by the muffled sobs coming from here and there, and the constant noise of empty stomachs.

 

*

 

“I wonder if they still have that thick bread,” Jean wondered aloud.

Marco looked up from his paper and glanced at his friend.

“Maybe. They were your favorite, right?”

Jean nodded, dreamy.

“They were so good,” he sighed. “Too bad the new garrison are dicks, Ilse always gave us some when she could.”

Marco didn’t reply, and brought his attention back to the few lines they were supposed to write for the end of the class. He didn’t really have the heart to focus on his work, but didn’t want to give Jean a bad example. Marco always gave the impression of being a cheerful boy whose smile couldn’t be brought down by anything, but he was actually constantly worrying about everyone else, especially the sandy-haired boy sitting next to him. He glanced at his side, and couldn’t help but smile softly when he noticed that Jean was still half-drooling at his memories, before a pang of pain went through his chest, washing his smile away in the process.

 

Jean used to live in a wealthy family.

He used to have three good meals a day, and a little snack in the afternoon. The single child of the most successful merchant of District 12.

The Capitol destroyed everything.

One day, his parents received a special invitation for a one-week trading event in District 1. They had kissed their son goodbye and told him to behave in their absence.

They never came back. 

Two months later, a heavily-perfumed and painted couple arrived with a lot of noise and a lot of servants. They put everything in golden bags, and Jean couldn’t do anything. He watched them bring down the paintings decorating the walls, his mother’s jewelries, the precious tea set they never used in fear of breaking it.

They left the house completely bare.

Jean never knew what really happened to his parents. But in his little heart, the seeds of hate were already planted, even if he wasn’t himself fully aware of it. Marco found him after he unsuccessfully tried to steal at the market, and brought him to their house. When evening came, Levi barely stopped to acknowledge the presence of a new child and nodded in their direction, leaving Marco to take care of Jean and brief him on the few simple rules in place in their little family. For example, no stealing. The pointed look Marco gave him threw Jean in an incoherent litany of both lame explanations and apologies that quickly stopped when Marco started laughing and told him that it was okay, that he just had to make sure to never do it again.

 

Jean’s hand waved in front of his eyes, startling Marco out of his reverie.

“Hey, are you here? How do you spell “carriage”?”

Marco looked at him in confusion. After a few seconds, Jean’s sarcastic smile faded.

“Are you okay? Are you sick?” he asked, clearly worried, forcefully putting a hand on the freckled boy’s forehead. “Do you have fever?”

Marco brushed his friend’s hand off, which confused him a lot.

“I’m sorry Jean, I’m not feeling well. I think I’m going to go home.” he said in a husky low voice.

Jean blinked at him, but didn’t comment and just told him to take care. Marco could see the worry in his eyes as he stood up to leave the class.

He felt horrible for lying to him.

But he couldn’t tell him what he had in mind. Jean wouldn’t let him do it.

           

He thought of the previous night, of Jean’s muffled sobs next to him, trying to hide his weakness and look strong. He thought of all the other times he had heard him quietly crying of hunger, despite trying so hard to “suck it up” and act tough.

           

His idea was stupid. But he had to try.

 

*

 

“Hey, where were you? You’re late.”

Jean glared at Eren, who glared back at him with a vicious spark in his eyes, as saying “you’re in so much trouble horseface”. Despite his irritation, Jean gulped hardly. That look could only mean one thing: Levi was mad at him for some reason.

The answer didn’t wait to reveal itself. The dark-haired boy’s face appeared in the doorframe of the backroom.

“Hannes dropped by to say that you and Marco didn’t show up today, care to explain?” he asked. “Where’s Marco by the way?”

Jean started silently cursing himself about forgetting their work at Hannes before his train of thought violently went sideways when he registered the second question.

“Wait, he isn’t here? I went to pick some herbs you told us were good against fever because he was sick and left school.”

Everyone in the room looked confused.

“I was here all day and I didn’t see him,” Christa replied from under the window in a small voice, still unable to move because of her broken leg.

Levi’s eyes fell on her for a brief second, and the annoyance on his face quickly melted, giving way to genuine worry, before he took control of his facial muscles again and settled for a calm expression.

“We should look for him then.”

Jean didn’t wait for the end of the sentence to drop his bag on the floor and run outside.

His earlier conversation with Marco resurfaced, and he remembered his lack of reaction when he had mentioned Levi prohibiting them from talking to the Peacekeepers. Marco usually would have jumped on the occasion to support their big brother’s decision and tell Jean again not to do anything foolish.

_No no no no you idiot._

Jean prayed with all his heart to whoever wanted to listen that he was wrong.

 

*

 

He wasn’t.

 

Marco was there.

He was there, but he wasn’t there.

Part of Jean’s brain registered footsteps behind him, and shocked gasps. _Probably Armin_ , he thought. He heard his voice telling Eren and Mikasa to go find Levi, and two sets of feet hurrying away. _Your voice is shaking badly_ , he wanted to point out.

He felt Armin’s hand carefully drop on his shoulder. He didn’t react. And then, Armin’s arms were around his shoulders and he wasn’t sure if it was to comfort him or just to keep himself from collapsing. He heard him repeatedly whispering “Oh God, oh God…” in a broken voice, and Jean wondered what God he was talking about. There wasn’t any God. Just a monster called the Capitol spawning demons and sending them to kill them.

Jean felt angry. But he didn’t even have the strength to stay angry, and all kind of thought vanished again from his mind. He couldn’t tear his eyes away from the bloody form in front of him.

He could clearly see dog bites where there was still something to see. A good part of the body was missing, and what remained was just a rough assembly of shredded flesh and organs. Part of him refused to link the freckled cheek he could still see with Marco. Another part denied the whole vision altogether.

 

He heard several footsteps coming and soon Levi’s voice rose, telling everybody not to look and wait for them a little further.

He felt the older boy slowly approaching, and crouching next to him and Armin. He didn’t say a word, simply putting one of his hands on Armin’s back and taking one of Jean’s hands in the other.

When he turned his head, the expression he saw on their surrogate brother’s delicate features almost ironically shocked him out of his shock state.

Levi’s grey eyes were shining with pure hate and anger.

A cold shiver went through Jean’s spine, and he knew that Armin had noticed it too by the way the blond boy’s body tensed behind his.

The expression was quickly gone though, and Levi stood up, telling them to go find a sheet to cover Marco’s rests. He then walked to the group of agitated children waiting a few meters away and told them to gather all the wood they could find. Jean couldn’t help but notice that blood was leaking from his clenched fists, leaving distinct scarlet lines on his pale skin.

“We should go,” Armin whispered.

The blonde boy didn’t wait for his answer to pull his limp body up. He had more strength than what his frail arms let it show, Jean noticed distantly.

On their way back, they passed in front of Eren and Mikasa, and Jean met Eren’s eyes. The usual spark of mutual irritation they always felt whenever one had the bad idea to cross the other’s vision field had completely died out. They just looked at each other for a few seconds, and Jean turned his head away, heading back to their house, walking mostly thanks to Armin’s silent support.

 

They burned Marco’s body that night, and Levi handed him the vial containing his ashes without a word. Jean looked at the small bottle and carefully closed his hand around it. It was so small that even his child hand could completely cover it. Later, he put a leather string through the top of the vial and tied it behind his neck.

Until the day Jean died, decades later, Marco’s ashes never left him.

 

*

 

After all the kids finally fell asleep, exhausted and with red-rimmed eyes, a single cloaked figure silently jumped out the window, lonely shadow heading with conviction towards the Peacekeepers’ barracks.

 

 

 


	3. Chapter Two

_Tick, tock._

_Tick, tock._

 

Levi’s heart was perfectly echoing the ticking clock in his head.

_Tick_

Or was it the other way around?

_Tock_

 

The boy could almost hear his blood rushing in his head and body, a mad flow of adrenaline that perfectly matched his current state of insanity. He didn’t even stop to think some more about what he was doing, even though he had the distinct feeling that it was something extremely stupid and that he was most probably going to regret it bitterly later. If there was a later.

But he couldn’t stop – he didn’t want to stop.

He didn’t want to just sit down in his little house and watch the kids and people he cared about being killed.

They were defenseless. Most of them hadn’t even been involved in a real fight. They didn’t need to, Levi always made sure that they never did anything that could cause them trouble. He sometimes wondered if it was a mistake, but he wasn’t sure it was worth letting their little faces getting beaten up. The oldest ones were here to protect them from nasty kids anyway, and Mikasa was worth a small army just by herself.

But even she couldn’t do anything against an automatic gun.

 

Levi stopped in front of the mayor’s house. A pang of guilt hit him hard, and the memories of Mrs Smith’s soft smile almost made his resolution step back. It felt like biting the hand feeding him, but he reasoned himself thinking that he wasn’t going to harm the Smiths directly, so there wasn’t that much of a problem, right?

Levi walked around the house and climbed over the back garden’s fence, stopping just a moment to take a close look at the meticulously kept lawn behind it. In the ghostly light of the full moon, he could discern a few stacks of earth standing out from the floor. _Seriously?_ he thought, raising an eyebrow. He was no expert in security systems but he was pretty sure that one was shitty like hell. Even a layman like him could guess how the thing worked. The short boy quietly jumped inside the garden and walked towards the backdoor, making sure not to step on the detectors. He turned the doorknob, and was surprised to find that it wasn’t locked. An alarm bell started ringing in his head and his heart throbbed with worry, but he was too far in the process to drop everything now. He pushed the door open and slid inside the house.

The Smiths’ living-room was nicely decorated, but not extravagantly: a big table, comfortable-looking chairs, a TV set, a few flower pots, several paintings. Levi’s eyes almost immediately fell on the big family picture hanging on the wall, and the three people on it. He distantly registered that Erwin was looking as good as he remembered, which led him to almost laugh out loud realizing what kind of stupid thought could cross his mind even with the gravity of the situation he was in. And then he met photo-Elena’s eyes, and he could swear that she was judging him hard for breaking in her house. Which was completely stupid, because it was just a picture. Levi still nervously bit his lip, before tearing his gaze away from the frame, letting them fall on the stairs leading upstairs. The mayor’s house was connected to the military barracks by a back corridor, built under the first mayor’s time, a paranoid old prick who wanted to make sure to have a safe escape from his room to the shields of the Peacekeepers. The corridor had never been used, and kind of melt into the background landscape of the district. Levi had good hope it was unguarded; his plan didn’t really include anything in case he was welcomed by a couple of electrical clubs anyway.

The boy slowly climbed the stairs, and blessed the Smiths for being able to maintain them and keep them from cracking at every step. He silently walked through a long corridor bordered by closed doors, and stopped in front of the last one, displaying a big half-erased EMERGENCY sign that clearly had seen better days. He tried opening the door, and again found it open, which wasn’t really surprising though. Who locked an emergency exit seriously?

The old door creaked.

Levi froze instantly, his heart jumped at a mad pace, every beat so loud that he was sure that if the door hadn’t awaken anyone, now the whole house was probably wondering who the hell was playing the drum with absolutely no skill in their corridor at such an unholy hour. He shot his head around, eyes wide and waiting for one of the room doors to violently open and someone to catch him red-handed and probably end his pathetic life in a very pathetic way.

Two seconds. Five seconds. Ten seconds.

Thirty seconds.

Nothing happened.

Levi allowed himself to let out a small sigh of relief and opened the door a bit more, just enough to allow him to slide through the gap. A new flight of stairs was waiting for him, inviting him to go downwards. Levi took the small lamp Erd had given him once out of his cloak, and the memory of the boy erased every doubt he had started to feel ever since he had come inside.

He wasn’t going to wait for a third death to take action.

The lamp gave out a warm pale yellow light, and Levi took care to check that the door also opened from his side before carefully pulling it close, fortunately without summoning the evil creak from before, and turned back to study the stairs again. The steps were made in a perfectly smooth dull stone, and he slowly started climbing down, trying to make as little noise as he could. He still felt like that each step he took resonated ridiculously loudly against the stone walls, and the fact that his heart beat had barely calmed down wasn’t helping at all either. When he arrived at the base of the stairs, Levi found himself in a new corridor, long of maybe twenty meters, leading to a big thick metal door. The ceiling was covered by neon lights that had died off a long time ago, just leaving their transparent skeletons hanging in perfect symmetry two meters from the ground. The boy’s steps echoed painfully loudly in the confined space, and he really hoped no one was waiting for him behind the door. It would be everything from awkward to him ending cold dead, which was an outcome he really wished to avoid if possible.

 

His wish was granted, and luck of luck, the room he found himself in happened to contain a few weapons. Levi carefully grabbed a gun, harshly making an angry spider leave the web it had threaded on it. They had probably been here since the tunnel was built, but seemed to be still working, what with the green light that appeared when Levi grabbed it, light that proceeded in illuminating the small room with a creepy radioactive ambiance.

That was all he needed. Just a few things to defend themselves in case they needed to. Given the state of what was surrounding him, the Peacekeepers were probably not even going to notice the absence of the weapons. Levi wasn’t even sure they were aware of their existence to begin with.

It was really too easy.

A cold shiver ran down his spine, and his personal alarm bell rang louder. But what could he do anyway? He was already there, half a dozen functioning guns just waiting for him to take them. It would be too stupid to let them here, right? After a couple additional seconds of indecision, the boy eventually took a neatly folded bag out from a pocket and started putting everything inside.

Unfortunately for Levi, the guns weren’t the only thing still working in the room. Somewhere in the control room of the HQ, a somnolent Peacekeeper noticed a usually dark screen suddenly turning green, and after staring in sleepy confusion at the small hooded figure taking what looked like military weapons for a little while, his neurons connected again and he jumped up to hit the alarm button.

As soon as he heard the piercing scream of the alarm, Levi jumped back and immediately started running towards the other side of the tunnel, his now full bag pressed against his chest. Adrenaline did wonders, and he somehow found himself back in the stairs in no time, running up two steps at a time despite his short legs.

 

And literally bumped into Erwin.

 

The blond boy caught him before he could fall back and break his neck in the stairs; and for two brief and strangely long seconds, Levi looked in Erwin’s sky-blue eyes at a closer range he could have ever hoped for, before loud voices and footsteps started ringing below.

Levi only had the time to see a dark cloud go across the other boy’s eyes before he was ungracefully pulled by the arm inside a room and shoved in a wardrobe. The door closed with a click, and Levi found himself covered by Erwin’s shirts and pants, blinking in deep confusion and wondering exactly what the hell just happened. But before he could go very far in these crucial existential questions, he heard loud voices emerging from the emergency door, shouting various orders. And to his surprise, a lot more younger voice replying calmly but firmly, and somehow succeeding in hushing the Peacekeepers.

Levi stuck his ear on the wardrobe’s door, trying to discern what they were saying.

“Are you sure you didn’t hallucinate? Obviously the door was unlocked, who would lock an emergency exit honestly? Yes I am sure no one came in, my room is just here, do you think I would have missed it if someone had broken in? Of course you can take a look around if you want, but I have to warn you that my father is the kind of man who doesn’t like being awaken in the middle of the night. I’m actually really surprised you haven’t waken him yet, you wouldn’t want this to be reported to your superiors now, would you?”

Levi heard a lot of grunts and protests, but just the fact that they were now whispering loudly instead of shouting told him that Erwin had won. After a couple of minutes, the footsteps finally left the house and the door creaked back to place. The wardrobe’s door opened again, and Levi staggered outside, almost tripping on a few clothes he had accidentally ejected with him. When he regained his balance, he looked up at Erwin, unsure of what he was supposed to do, unconsciously pressing his bag against him like it were a shield. He had the feeling he should thank the older boy, but his brain was a little malfunctioning after so many emotions. Also, Erwin had apparently taken to studying him extremely intensely and it was making Levi very uncomfortable.

“How did you pass the security systems?” Erwin eventually asked.

“Your so-called security systems are shittier than my life, smartass.”

After a long second of stunned silence and two shocked blinks from the blond boy, Levi realized that these very impolite words had come out from his mouth, and proceeded in mentally and profusely cursing the lack of integrated filter on his mouth. And then the short boy saw Erwin frown, and anxiety settled back in his stomach, making his heart jump again in his chest. The guy could still call the Peacekeepers back and expose him, and that was such a stupid stupid move, and oh crap he was so going to die.

But just when Levi felt like his life was soon going to flash before his eyes, something very strange happened: Erwin suddenly burst out laughing, and the clear and ringing noise startled Levi who instinctively stepped back into a defensive stance, the bag still above his chest like a piece of armour. The move just made the blond boy giggle more though, and soon, Levi found himself awkwardly looking at the mayor’s son doubled up with laughter on his bed, not even trying to muffle the noise. As much as he found the sound pleasant to hear, Levi was all for trying to get away discreetly and noticed by the least people possible, and that wasn’t helping at all.

“Aren’t you going to wake your parents up?” he furiously whispered.

Erwin stopped for half a second to look at him, cheeks red and eyes glittering, but then started giggling more to Levi’s greatest distress and confusion. The short boy seriously wondered if half a dozen guns were heavy enough to knock Erwin out, and he was more and more willing to try it out.

“They are not home,” the blond boy finally replied before Levi could decide to take action, wiping a tear away from his eyes, still trying to regain a normal breath. “Something to do in 8 about the supply wagons, I’m not sure.”

_Oh._

After a short moment of surprise, Levi suddenly felt completely ridiculous, what with his anxiety and his bag of guns and sewn and resewn again clothes, and it must have being pretty apparent on his face because _that fucker just started laughing again._

Levi was too tired and confused to feel anything more than rough annoyance, but he did want to leave this place as soon as possible, and seriously considered just running to the window and jumping outside. He should be able to go away without breaking something too important. But then his eyes fell on a drawing stuck on one of the walls, next to a landscape painting, and surprise suddenly covered his face. He walked in front of it and put his fingers on the paper, delicately tracing the thick pencil lines. It represented a bunch of stick-kids giving flowers and hearts to a taller stick-lady with long blond hair and a crown. The kids had been so proud of it.

“Did you like the pie?”

Levi startled and turned his head back to Erwin. The blond boy had calmed down and was now staring at him with shiny eyes, a smile still floating on his lips.

“What,” Levi offered blankly. And then after a few seconds of intense staring from Erwin: “Oh.”

The pie. It was for it that the gang had made that drawing.

“You baked it?” The question immediately sounded stupid to his own ears, but Erwin had the decency to simply nod without commenting.

Levi stayed silent a moment, recalling how the kids’ little faces had lit up when he had brought it home, how they had spent long minutes just looking at it with bright eyes, no one daring touching it as if it was a treasure, until Sasha had finally cracked and taken a part. The beginning of a smile formed on his lips, which he suppressed quickly when he noticed that Erwin had seen it.

“They loved it,” he replied. “Thank you,” he added a second later.

Erwin smiled at him, and Levi couldn’t help but notice the similarities with his mother. It wasn’t the dashing smile he remembered him giving around at school; this one was… truer. Something in Levi told him that Erwin wasn’t giving that smile to everyone, and he turned his eyes away. This whole thing was going way too far from his comfort zone.

“So you didn’t eat it?”

Levi looked back at the other boy, and shook his head slowly.

“The kids needed it more than me,” he replied.

Erwin pondered the answer a moment, and stood up suddenly.

“I baked another one this evening, do you want to take it?”

Levi offered a few confused blinks as an answer.

“What?”

But then his stomach decided to come back to life (“Pie!”) and started complaining loudly like a bunch of undisciplined toddlers, making Levi twitch and look at Erwin in embarrassment. To his surprise, the later just chuckled, and the dark-haired boy had the stupid thought that he was in the presence of an angel, thought that he brushed off quickly with a frown before it could breed other idiocies.

 

A few minutes later, Levi was sent back with a bag of guns in one hand and a freshly baked pie in the other. And as he headed back to his little home, he thought that he just had a very strange night.

 

 

*

 

 

The next morning, Levi completely missed the general awakening of the house, and only left his comatose state with a very undignified shriek when Mikasa mercilessly dropped a glass of cold water on his face. He didn’t know what he had done to deserve this, but Mikasa had her “don’t question me” face, so he didn’t ask. Many people said that his sister was like a (not so) miniature version of him, but he was himself convinced that she was at least ten times scarier, which both amused and frightened him in equal measures.

“Eren and Armin have something for you,” she announced blankly. At these words, two very excited little balls jumped near the older boy’s bed and handed him a scroll of paper. His name was written in an elegant handwriting on the outside, and he knew who it was from even before Eren and Armin started rumbling over how cool and awesome the mayor’s son was. Levi made a mental note to tell them later not to fall for the first pretty face they encountered, or they would be in a lot of trouble. He then realized what he had just thought, and wondered just how hard he had hit his head on the wardrobe. He still wasn’t truly over the general weirdness of the night he had just spent, and the fact that part of his brain was fighting to go back to sleep didn’t really help either.

Levi looked down at the scroll with a sigh and unrolled it. And felt his heart sink.

 _The Peacekeepers are angry,_ it simply read.

A chill went down his spine and he bit his lip nervously, before remembering that he wasn’t alone. Eren and Armin were now sharing their morning encounter with the others, with big gestures and glitter in their eyes, but Mikasa was still staring at him with a hint of worry dancing in her big eyes. Levi forced some sort of smile on his lips, but he could tell that she wasn’t fooled.

“Hey, isn’t it time for school? What are you waiting for?” he asked with fake severity.

His sister tilted her head, and opened her mouth as to say something, but then closed it and simply took his hand in hers.

“Don’t do anything stupid, brother.”

Surprise flashed in his eyes, but he nodded slowly and told her not to worry with an empty smile. He watched her gesture to the boys and the other kids to gather their stuff, and one by one the group prepared their little belongings for school. Ymir crouched down to let Christa climb on her back, and soon they were all at the door, waving goodbye at him. He waved back, and kept on doing so until the last one had disappeared at the corner, just in case someone looked back.

“You stole the guns.”

Levi jumped and grabbed a small arm in reflex, whole body tense and ready to kick and bite, before quickly letting it go when he saw who it was.

“Aren’t you supposed to be at school?” he grunted.

“So are you,” Jean replied, unimpressed.

 _Fair point_ , he thought. He was tempted to say that it wasn’t the same, but he knew what children old enough “learned” at school: propaganda, propaganda, and more propaganda. And after what happened to Jean, it was just cruel to tell him to go back there.

“Are you going to kill them?”

Levi looked surprised at the young boy, and couldn’t help but breath in sharply when he noticed how pale his face was and how tired and hollow his young eyes had become. He could tell that Jean had been crying not so long ago, and his heart ached when he put that vision next to the one of the overly energetic boy who always talked first and thought after Jean used to be.

“No,” Levi replied slowly after a moment.

“Then why did you steal them?”

Levi glanced at the carelessly dropped bag in a corner of the house, barely dissimulated with a blanket.

_Yeah, why did I steal them?_

With a clearer mind, he now fully realized what a stupid move it was. His plan had been full of holes and it was a real miracle he was still alive to begin with. And what did he expect, that the Peacekeepers would leave even an old stack of weapons unmonitored? They were bound to find out sooner or later anyway. Levi wondered if he could discreetly put the guns back and solve the problem. But as soon as the though formed in his mind, he knew that it wouldn’t be so easy. He humiliated the Peacekeepers. They were going to demand a head for that.

A lesson his teacher had told them when he was still an assiduous student came back to his mind. During the Dark Days, it wasn’t rare for the troops of the Capitol to arbitrarily execute people to drive the local rebel leaders to denounce themselves, or other people to expose them.

He gulped nervously.

“I don’t know. I just thought that we would be safer with them,” he replied.

 _Tick Tock,_ the clock sang in his head.

An outsider could think that Levi was scared for his upcoming first Reaping. It would be far from surprising really, many children dreaded this day so much that they ended lying sick in bed a few days before and were forced to stand with a sharp pain in their stomachs on D-Day. But Levi wasn’t afraid of the Reaping; he wasn’t afraid of dying young, he knew that the odds of him living a long happy life and dying peacefully were close to zero anyway.

What really scared him was going and leaving the kids empty-handed, defenceless against a world that only wanted to hurt them.

“I could hand them back and hope that they won’t kill me,” he suggested without conviction, passing a tired hand on his face.

“They _will_ kill you,” Jean said.

“I know.”

“I could turn them back.”

Levi froze and shot his head back up at Jean with a horrified look.

“What?”

The younger boy just stared down at his surrogate brother calmly, face devoid of emotions.

“They need you here. They don’t need me,” he stated like an obvious fact. “Not anymore.”

Levi’s eyes widened, brain furiously processing what Jean had just said with horror. But he quickly took control of his emotions and facial muscles again even though his heart was still beating madly in alarm, and firmly seized the boy by his shoulders.

“Marco’s death wasn’t your fault, Jean,” he told him resolutely, looking straight in his eyes.

He wasn’t really sure what kind of reaction he had wanted to produce in the sandy-haired boy’s mind, but the name seemed to trigger something strong in Jean because he started to shake. And soon, his empty brown eyes were filled with pain and tears again.

“N-no, it was my birthday and he knew I love that thick bread Ilse used to give us, a-and I knew he had something in mind, I should have stopped him, I- I-”

And without further warning, Levi suddenly found himself with a crying child in his arms. After a very short moment of surprise, he started to softly stroke Jean’s hair, letting him get everything out, letting him cry all he wanted on his shoulder. A maniac part of his brain registered that he would have to wash that shirt again.

He couldn’t care less.

Something in him started to burn, and an idea formed in his angry mind, idea that soon crystallized and turned into a decision.

 

The Peacekeepers might be angry, but he was angry too.

And he would make them pay for every tear they wrested out of his little ones’ eyes.

 

When Jean’s sobs calmed down, Levi made him look at him again.

“Do you trust me?”

Jean sobbed a bit more, and looked at him in confusion.

“Of course,” he replied, studying his big brother’s narrow eyes curiously. And then his own little pupils widened, and the boy felt like he was back in that dark alley the day before, Armin half-hugging and half-leaning on his back, Levi’s hand warm and firm around his.

Levi’s grey eyes shining like the sharpest knife he had ever seen. Cold. Predatory.

Deadly.

“Then we are going to pay a visit to the mayor’s house.”

 

 


	4. Chapter Three

 

“What you want to do is very daring, if you allow me,” Erwin said without looking at them, opening another cupboard and taking a medium-sized box out. Levi’s eyes immediately fell on it and his whole train of thoughts instantly faded somewhere into the back of his head, barely registering the comment, and focused instead on that very interesting thing that had just appeared in his vision field. Not that Erwin was uninteresting, but that box he was holding was quite more relevant to his immediate digestive interest. He had no idea what a sushi was, but the picture sure looked yummy. He didn’t even need to look down to know that Jean must have come to the same conclusion, if the amused look Erwin was now giving both of them was a hint of any sort.

“My father brought that back from 4, I think it’s some sort of old fish recipe that was invented like centuries ago. My mom isn’t fond of it, though. You can have it if you want,” he said, and firmly put the box in Jean’s hands without waiting for an answer. The little boy immediately stopped gaping at Erwin and started gaping at the box instead, his neurons seemingly unable to make any kind of connection for the moment. Levi nudged him.

“Where has “thank you” gone?”

Jean startled and repeated the two words loudly, pressing the box against his chest, his cheeks slowly regaining the pinkish colour they usually wore. Levi felt a little relieved.

He hadn’t planned on discussing food at all when he had taken his second-in-one-day hot-headed decision (he hoped it wasn’t going to become a habit), but they had barely got in that the scent of cooked meat had reached their nostrils and their long hours of fasting had suddenly come back to their minds. And no, that wasn’t a fancy way to say that Levi had almost started drooling on the Smiths’ carpet.

Erwin led them to the living-room, and invited them to sit around the table. Several books and notebooks were spread all across it, and Erwin pushed them to a side without a trace of gentleness. Levi was glad to know that the mayor’s son had almost as much esteem for his classes and homework as he did.

“So, will you help us?”

Erwin didn’t reply immediately, silently studying the shorter boy with his clear blue eyes. Intensely. Just like the night before. Levi held his gaze without a word for a moment, but he felt like that if it got any longer small steamy holes were literally going to appear on his skin, and he didn’t like that feeling at all. He shifted nervously, but forced himself not to look away.

“Stop doing that,” he grunted.

“Doing what?”

“Doing… that,” he replied with a vague gesture in Erwin’s general direction. “Looking at me like I was a freak.”

“But you are a freak,” Erwin simply laughed, flashing him one of his illegally dashing smiles in the process. Levi knew that he should feel irritated and offended, and he did, but he was just too tired to play that shitty game with the dazzling prick seating across from him right now. So instead of kicking the leg he knew was extended somewhere in front of his own, Levi settled to let out a deep and loud sigh.

“Nevermind. Will you help us, yes or no?”

Erwin’s smile fainted, and a dark cloud settled in his pupils.

“Are you aware that I could easily go to the Peacekeepers and expose you? They are just next door,” he slowly asked, voice quiet and devoid of emotions.

Levi blinked at him, confused.

“If you wanted to, you would have done it yesterday.”

“I could also have been playing with you.”

The reply rang in the air between the two boys for a moment, then slowly proceeding in sinking in Levi’s mind. The shorter boy’s eyes widened, all trace of playful annoyance suddenly gone. He felt a cold shiver run down his spine, but he forced his heartbeat to remain at a steady pace. Every cell in his body seemed to come to a pause, standing still, focused and awaiting. His grey eyes narrowed even more than they already were, and he slightly leaned forward over the table, furiously trying to detect any hint of whatever Erwin was thinking behind those emotionless eyes.

“Were you?” the boy finally asked in a low voice, the two words strangely resonating in the silent room. He could feel Jean shifting nervously on his chair at his right, and he moved his arm under the table to cover the younger boy’s hand with much more calm than he really felt.

“What do you think?” Erwin quietly replied, tilting his head.

There was something in the blond boy’s eyes and voice that made Levi instinctively shift in a position that would allow him to move faster if needed. He didn’t break eye contact, though. Even if he was trying to appear as calm as possible from the outside, his brain cells had resumed their activities after a short period of shocked blank, and what was now crossing his mind was more like a raging storm than a sea under a sunny sky. Half of him was freaking out about how it could be a trap, about how the boy sitting in front of him might just be playing a vicious game with him, and more importantly, that he was losing. The other half was trying to understand why that possibility hadn’t even crossed his mind before. It wasn’t like it was some sort of unpredictable plot twist, the only real interaction he had ever had with Erwin was barely several hours ago, and he had been in a situation that hadn’t exactly allowed him to use his full intellectual capacities. So why did he just automatically decide to trust him? Levi was far from being the kind of person to blindly give his trust to the first guy showing him kindness; but still, his brain somehow did it without him even taking alarm. Was it because of his completely irrelevant old schoolboy crush? Or more probably because of Mrs Smith? If it was the case then he must have hit his head even more badly than he had thought on Erwin’s wardrobe.

“You hate them, don’t you?”

Levi startled, and caught Erwin snapping his eyes away from him to focus on Jean. He followed his gaze, and couldn’t keep his eyes from widening in a ridiculous way. The confused boy with the sushi box was completely gone. Jean’s eyes were incredibly calm and unreadable, contrasting with his anxious reaction from just a few moments ago.

He had seen something. Something part of Levi’s brain was still looking for.

“Why would I?” Erwin’s reply came, barely more than a whisper. But his tone had changed, revealing just the littlest hint of uncertainty, as if Jean had hit a secret vibe in him.

Levi turned away from the younger boy to study Erwin’s face. His features were completely devoid of emotions, but something was shining in his eyes. An ice-cold light.

So cold that it was burning.

“What have they done to you?” Levi’s question slipped from his mouth. Erwin’s eyes immediately snapped back to him, and the intensity of his gaze made the short boy fall back on his chair, as if he had really been burned.

And then it was just gone.

Levi had to blink a few times before being able to regain control of his facial muscles, his eyes still looking for the closest thing to actual human emotions the mayor’s son had shown him so far. But it had just disappeared, as if it had never been there at all to begin with.

“You two are really special people,” Erwin commented, voice steady and devoid of any trace of emotion, his blue eyes as lipid as a sunny sky.

 _Like a sky before a hurricane_.

“And you yourself are far from being like most people, aren’t you?” Levi replied with the same tone. Erwin silently stared at him, but something had changed. Even if it was involuntary, he had revealed some part of him he was jealously keeping inside, something that he was clearly not ready to share with anyone. But Levi had seen it. And he knew that the boy was now deciding whether he trusted him with that secret or not. Levi didn’t want to know what would happen if he settled for the negative option.

And then Erwin smiled, and the young boy felt all the heavy tension leave his shoulders. He sighed silently.

“I think I have a plan,” the mayor’s son then simply declared, grinning as if the few strange minutes they had just experienced had never existed. After a few seconds, Levi shifted to settle back into a comfortable position on his chair, and heard Jean let out a deep breath he had probably been holding through the entire conversation. Levi squeezed his hand under the table, and the little boy gave him a relieved look.

And as Erwin exposed his idea, half-leaning on the table as the conspirators they were, any remnants of the cold doubt Levi could have still felt had completely vanished. And as hard as he tried, he just couldn’t bring himself to summon them back.

And it scared him.

He trusted the kids, all of them. He trusted his friends and Old Granny living next to them.

But what he felt for Erwin wasn’t the same. It was a whole other kind of trust, one that he didn’t know he was capable of giving. One that told him that Erwin wasn’t going to just help them, but lead them to victory.

He didn’t know where this conviction came from. He just knew it.

And even years later, when he finally let out his last breath, this conviction hadn’t left him.

_I trust you. Don’t let us down._

_Don’t let me down._

 

*

 

 

Erwin looked from his window at the Head Peacekeeper – a middle aged giant going by the well-deserved name of Brutus – throwing a fit at his front door. He heard his name come back several times in the flow of angry words and insults, but it didn’t worry him more than that. He knew that his parents had his back, and you just didn’t impress the Smiths that easily.

At the beginning, he had been very anxious about his father. His mother had always been his best accomplice, but Anthony Smith was another problem. Giving away food to starving kids was a thing, pretending that the military would be in a shortage of basically everything for an unknown amount of time was a whole other matter. The memory of that first time his father had told about his dream of seeing him as a Head Peacekeeper still made his heart beat uncomfortably fast and his palms sweat. It was years ago, but he still had nightmares of that party. And even if his father had made him assist to a few others after, it still was something he absolutely wasn’t willing to do on his own.

He hated those overly sweet smiles and flashing lights and that obnoxious abundance.

He hated even more the sheer feeling of power that reading through these people and manipulating them gave him. He hated that every time when he came home, he looked at the mirror and couldn’t recognize the boy looking back at him, the boy wearing a mask of his face and smiling like a bloodthirsty shark with his lips. And the worst was when he could see the way his mother was looking at him, and he always felt so dirty and just wanted to throw himself in a fire to wash his body and soul, to scrub all that filth away from his skin even if he had to hurt himself and bleed. He almost wanted to feel that pain; he felt like that even it would raise him from his horrible state of impurity.

A few meters down, on the mayoral well-kept doorstep, friendly Brutus suddenly threw his arms up with a final and loud shout, startling Erwin out of his gloomy recalling. The boy shook his head swiftly, trying to get rid of the last dark clouds still lingering in his mind, and just took a couple of seconds to rest his head in his hands, hushing the unwanted thoughts away and reorganizing his mind with the perfect precision he liked it having. He then looked out from his window again, and saw Brutus stomping away, still making big threatening gestures at Mrs Smith. The lady didn’t react though, and just stared at him with stone hard eyes as he kept on yelling lame and hollow threats while walking back to his quarters. When the soldier disappeared behind the walls of the military barracks, Elena turned towards her son’s window and winked with a grin. Erwin smiled back and nodded.

Their plan was very simple and had at least one hundred ways to go completely wrong. But on the heat of the moment, with Levi and Jean’s resolute eyes on him, it had seemed easy. He had felt invincible, powerful, as if he could control everything. But not in the way he knew he could drive the painted people of the Capitol to reveal a secret with a nice word and a childish innocent smile.

That feeling had felt good. Intoxicating. But so different from breathing in poisonous smoke as all his previous experiences of power had ever felt like; this one had the light texture of a gulp of fresh air, reviving his heart and mind, giving a new pleasant jolt to his whole being.

Erwin was positive he had never felt so alive before.

When his parents had returned from 8, they just confirmed what he had already seen on the federal channel: the supply wagons had been attacked when they were arriving in the industrial district, and even if the culprits had been quickly caught and executed, the contents of the cars had been severely damaged.

Or at least, that was the official version Mrs Smith later reported to the Peacekeepers.

To be honest, the wagon with a big 12 written on it had been barely scratched. And part of its contents were now enjoying a new life far from the white walls of the military HQ, carefully smuggled into the backrooms of the poor people of district 12. But the authorities of 8 had been too busy making interviews and repressive broadcast reports of the executions to correctly write down the actual extent of the damage, and it sure like hell wasn’t something the Peacekeepers of 12 needed to know. It was a very pleasant bonus Erwin hadn’t anticipated, and for once he was sort of thankful for the bloodthirsty minds of the Capitol.

He almost thought that their lie was going to backfire though, when the Head Peacekeeper had come to his father, asking for a confirmation of what his wife had reported. They hadn’t decided to tell Anthony about their little scheme yet (and actually weren’t sure they wanted to tell him in the first place), what with all his insane dream of seeing his son in the same uniform as that guy.

But then Anthony Smith had just raised an eyebrow at the soldier and asked him if he was accusing his wife of lying, and that this would go in his monthly asset of their work. Which had immediately calmed Brutus’s vehemence and made him turn away and resume his daily tasks with a very rigid back. The report threat was apparently an excellent argument against every Peacekeeper, and it made Erwin wonder if their affectation to the most remote district of the country wasn’t the result of a not quite glorious note in their careers. He was tempted to try just to what extend that fear could work, but he wasn’t suicidal either. Especially since he knew that the Peacekeepers were aware that he most probably had something to do with the strange disappearance of a short hooded thief with a handful of guns, and then of their breakfasts, lunches and dinners. Even if the latter one was just a happy coincidence. He didn’t feel the slightest guilty though.

Afterwards, Mayor Smith never talked again about the incident, but had shot a very long and full of meaning look at his son on one or two occasions. Erwin got the message: his father didn’t appreciate the new garrison, and therefore was turning a very convenient blind eye over whatever he was trying to do. He wasn’t to expect more of him, though.

That was well enough for Erwin.

The boy glanced at the clock steadily ticking on his wall, and looked outside again. Timing was essential in his plan, and even if it didn’t involve a time bomb or anything that radical, he was playing with the nerves of a group of heavily armed pissed off soldiers, and that could end up with a boom way bigger than one an explosive could produce.

From the corner of his eyes, he saw Old Granny slowly approaching the military gate, a basket of food under her arm. Erwin sighed of relief, and blessed Levi for supervising the situation in the Seam. He didn’t have an exact grasp of what influence the raven-haired boy actually had out there, but he somehow knew that he would manage to do what was necessary. He was glad to find out that he wasn’t wrong.

A couple of guards stopped the old lady and he could see them actively talking. Then Brutus reappeared between his subordinates and started pointing an accusing finger at her, but Old Granny’s smile didn’t waver for a bit, and Erwin couldn’t help but feel a growing admiration for the old lady. After a few minutes, she slowly handed the basket to them, and walked away in her tranquil pace, the expression of a job well-done on her wrinkled face. Erwin followed her with his eyes until she disappeared behind the shady houses.

He couldn’t back out anymore. Success would lead to a great improvement of the district’s life. Failure…

Failure wasn’t an option.

*

 

As miraculous as it was, Erwin’s plan worked. The first part brought great insane enjoyment to Levi’s grieving self. He saw some of the Peacekeepers sneak out at night and knock at the merchants’ backdoors, humbly seeking to trade some of their belongings for a hot meal. Had he be the only one concerned, he would have asked the merchants to slam the door in their faces and make the soldiers enjoy the sweet despair of real hunger and hopelessness. He was at least eighty per cent sure they would have been more than willing to indulge. None of them carried the new garrison in their hearts.

But Erwin had a plan, and as much as he wanted to see those people in their immaculate uniforms on their knees, he couldn’t deny that the blond boy was far more foreseeing than him. As hateful and enraged as he was, he couldn’t keep the whole district from the possible future Erwin was laying the brick for. Besides, refusing help to a large group of armed people was doomed to violently backfire sooner or later.

Levi regularly received notes, carried by a different kid each time. He knew that the only thing keeping the Peacekeepers from forcefully requisitioning their supplies was Erwin and his family. Erwin and his brain and perfect timing over when the district dwellers should send some tokens of support and extent generous hands to the wary Peacekeepers.

The ease with which Erwin could feel those things was more than unnerving, especially for someone his age. Levi couldn’t help but feel cold sweat form in his back whenever he tried to picture what kind of things the blond boy would be able to achieve, given the time and position. Brutus was dangerous. A knife was dangerous. The kind of dangerous that toyed with fears and fed on pain.

But Erwin was far more lethal than that. And Levi wondered if anyone else had really realized it.

 

*

 

They were playing a very dangerous game, but they came out victorious.

More and more Peacekeepers started sneaking out from the barracks, constantly looking around like tracked animals to check that no one had seen them trading clothes, jewels, or even their help doing some tasks for a hot soup. But with time, they started running into each other, and quickly realized that they were all basically doing the same thing. It had led to a certain number of moments of heavy and tense silence, and then awkward and shy laughs that had soon turned into friendly bumps and smiles of relief. It still wasn’t something you could talk about deliberately in public, but in the privacy of a house, more than soldier was willing to say that what they were eating now was far more tasteful than the insipid ratios that they had been used to swallow down twice a day since the moment they had put a foot in the Training School in 2. And when people started spotting Brutus doing the same, it was just like a dam had opened, and Peacekeepers and common district inhabitants just melt together in a confusing but surprisingly functioning daily life. Without the threat of armed repression, it just felt like a heavy invisible smoke had vanished, and life in the district got significantly better, even if it was just on a psychological way. They were still starving though, especially with a bunch of new mouths to feed, but really few of them were willing to sacrifice the strange and wonderful thing they had just started to enjoy for a few more beans in their plates.

It was a miracle.

But Levi just couldn’t bring himself to appreciate it to its fullest.

Even days and days later, every time the dark-haired boy saw a military casually walking along the streets, he still couldn’t help but wonder if they were the one who had released their dog on Marco, leading the memory of the mutilated little body flash in front of his eyes and anger to start boiling again inside of him. But then, he would see someone wave at the Peacekeeper with a smile and the later wave back politely, and the revived fire would die out again. Levi wanted a face and a name for Marco’s horrible murder, but what would he do with it anyway? He couldn’t ask for the culprit to be punished. And he knew that despite the incredibly peaceful appearance, the miraculous situation they were now enjoying was hanging by a thread. A fragile thread.

Marco wouldn’t have wanted him to ruin everything in his name.

 

*

 

Four weeks later, the new supply wagons arrived. Peacekeepers retreated back to their barracks, and everything almost immediately slipped back to place, as if the last month hadn’t even happened. No more polite salutes in the streets, or very seldom ones. No more helpful brawny soldier to help an ageing man carry his merchandise. Everything gone, just like a dream.

When Levi pointed it out to Erwin, the blonde boy simply smiled at him, a mysterious air floating on his face. The mayor’s son was sitting on the floor of their house, lightly stroking Jean’s hair, the rhythm matching perfectly the quiet snoozes coming out from the young boy. The view didn’t trouble Levi at all, and even brought a very tiny fond smile on his lips. Erwin had somehow crept into his daily life as if he had belonged there all long and was now just claiming a place that had been reserved for him all this time. It wasn’t rare anymore for Levi to find him sitting in the middle of a circle of amazed kids with a book in his hands when he came back from an errand. One could think that the dark-haired boy must have felt jealous of the other boy getting so quickly his own personal space in his little family’s hearts. But he didn’t. He truly didn’t. How could he resent someone who could bring such bright smiles and shiny eyes on the little ones’ faces with just a few words? Levi had never managed to do so. Apparently, he just wasn’t wired to have something else than the constant expression of an angry murderer. Which was all fine to keep mischievous brats away, but didn’t do much good in kid-caring tactics.

Also, the dark-haired boy had to confess that he himself enjoyed a lot the mayor’s son’s company. _Someone has a big fat crush_ , a little voice often viciously whispered in his head, but Levi didn’t shrug it off as he usually did with cringing thoughts. He was aware that he felt something very special for Erwin, but he didn’t actually care what exactly it was. He had hung around enough people and had heard enough conversations to have been able to recognize the crush he had had on Erwin back at school. But he was pretty sure it wasn’t the same anymore. Time had passed, things had happened, and he felt like that a crush didn’t apply at all anymore for whatever feelings he had for the blond boy. Maybe was it love, the logical continuation of his previous feelings as one might say. But maybe was it something else. What importance did it have? What truly mattered to him was that Erwin’s presence in the little house’s life had become something essential, and that he wished that he would stay the longest he could.

For the kids, as well as for himself.

A few days later, Erwin’s enigmatic smile finally took sense when a young Peacekeeper shyly came back with a few raw vegetables and knocked on Old Granny’s door. The kind lady welcomed him in, and the next night he was back with a couple of friends. And then others followed his example, and a few more the night after. And soon enough, almost the whole garrison was back in the streets, sliding back into their recently acquired routine with ease. Most of them said that they just couldn’t go back to the horrible food the HQ sent them after having enjoyed a month of simple yet tasteful meals. But one could see in their eyes and smiles that they just really missed the atmosphere that sharing had created. Contrarily to what the Capitol wanted them to look like, the Peacekeepers weren’t all machines or monsters. They were humans too, some of them barely in their twenties and badly missing the warm feeling of camaraderie they enjoyed with their siblings and fellow trainees not so long ago. Brutus didn’t join them this time, but didn’t report them either. But the message was clear. If they wanted to keep on living like that, they would have to do it discreetly. Out of the law’s sight.

The realization always made them laugh.

The Peacekeepers had ironically given a new booming birth to District 12’s black market.

 


	5. Chapter Four

           

Levi drank down his mug of coffee in one shot and stretched out his arm towards Erwin with an expectant look. The blond boy just stared back at him in disbelief, his own almost untouched coffee in his hand.

“You shouldn’t drink so much, Levi, it’s not good for your health.”

 “I will drink less the day I can sleep more than two hours, which didn’t happen last night or the night before or the last entire week for that matter, so shut up and give me more.” The short boy then punctuated his words with an insistent look towards his empty mug, glaring at Erwin with dark rings under his eyes. After a moment, the later just sighed heavily and grabbed his cup to refill it.

“I shouldn’t have let you taste it in the first place.”

“Too late.”

“You are consuming more than my parents together.”

“I have more kids to deal with than your parents together.”

Erwin opened his mouth to make a snarky reply, but the kitchen’s door suddenly opened and Mrs Smith appeared, perfectly dressed and hair neatly tied in a complex crown around her head as usual. A delighted smile appeared on her face when she spotted the two boys, and she greeted them both warmly.

“What a pleasure to see you Levi! I didn’t know you were coming this early today?”

“Good morning mom,” Erwin cheerfully called back, walking to his mother and dropping a light kiss on her cheek. He was as tall as her now, and kept on growing every day to everyone’s pleasure and Levi’s greatest dismay. “Levi was actually hoping to drink down our entire stock of coffee before you could notice it,” he added with a overly cheerful laugh, making the younger boy produce a ridiculous strangled yelp behind him. Erwin decided to enjoy the moment with a sadistic satisfaction, mostly because he knew that he was _so_ going to get a new bruise for that later, and he was starting to have a fair collection of them to display in various places of his body. That was what he got for pushing Levi’s buttons, but he sure like hell wasn’t going to stop anytime soon.

He had his priorities right.

“By the way, mom, about the…?” Erwin suddenly asked, letting his question hang unfinished in the air. Elena immediately smiled at him and pointed behind her with a small wink. Erwin glanced at the storage room’s door and then turned back to look at Levi standing by the table with a confused expression, mouth already open to formulate a question, but the blond boy slipped out quickly before any word could come out. As soon as Erwin stepped behind his mother, he heard her pushing the door almost close and starting talking to the dark-haired boy with enthusiasm, asking him how Eren’s cold had been going, and if there had been more red-nosed victims in the house. And as Levi answered a bit awkwardly that they were much better even if some of them were still sneezing regularly and especially in the middle of the night, the blond boy retrieved the big packet carefully put in a corner of the storage room and scampered back to the kitchen, holding it in both hands. Erwin stopped behind the door, taking a deep breath through his wide smile. His heartbeat was a bit too fast and his palms were a bit sweaty, but he knew that it was just excitement. He had been waiting for this moment for weeks now, and he wasn’t going to mess it up. He pushed the door open with a strong movement of his shoulder, barged in the room and walked straight to where Levi had sit down again, dropping the packet in front of the younger boy’s surprised eyes, making him startle.

“Happy birthday Levi!” Erwin grinned from one ear to the other, and he heard his mother repeat the three words more softly next to him. In front of him, the raven-haired boy was staring straight at him, not even blinking. After a few seconds, Erwin’s smile slightly wavered and he leaned forward, Levi’s complete lack of reaction starting getting a bit creepy. He was about to ask him if he was okay when Levi’s mouth twitched and the boy blinked a few times, opening and closing his mouth without a sound coming out from it. Erwin heard his mother chuckle lightly at his right, and the noise made the shorter boy turn his eyes in her direction, and then back at him, and then back at his mother. He still didn’t appear to be able to manage a word though.

“Oh dear, I have to go,” Elena suddenly gasped, eyes fixed on the clock hanging at the wall, and she quickly stood up and leaned down to drop a kiss on Levi’s forehead in the same fluid movement, making the boy gap again. “Have an excellent day, darling, it’s your thirteenth birthday only once in a life, right!” And then Mrs Smith turned around and left the kitchen, the house’s front door clicking behind her shortly after. Erwin followed her with his eyes until she was gone, then turned back to look at Levi, who was apparently starting to function again.

“My, my, I was afraid I broke you,” Erwin laughed, his voice resonating in the silent room. Levi blinked at him, and then his eyes fell on the packet in front of him, still untouched. Erwin couldn’t help a fond smile forming on his lips, and he gently pushed the package towards the younger boy, encouraging him to open it. Levi stared at it a few more seconds, then looked up at him and frowned.

“What is it?”

This time it was Erwin’s turn to blink in confusion, and his smile wavered a little.

“It’s your gift. From my mom and me.”

“Why?”

The blond boy twitched, Levi’s vehemence hitting him like a rock. All his previous excitement was gone now, and he felt his heart jump in anxiety. It wasn’t supposed to go like this, it was supposed to be a happy moment, a moment filled with joy and laughter. But Levi was obviously mad for some reason, and it confused and upset Erwin deeply.

“It’s your birthday,” he answered slowly, not sure how to react. “You are supposed to receive gifts on your birthday.”

Levi didn’t reply, but after a moment something changed in his expression. The anger melted from his face, and he turned his eyes away, looking straight out from the kitchen’s window. Erwin stared at him for a moment, and then realized something. Levi’s eyes were shining, as if… as if he was about to cry and holding his tears inside.

“Levi, what is it?” the blond boy asked softly. His friend’s expression was distressing him, and Erwin couldn’t manage to understand why, and his ignorance upset him even more. He saw Levi’s lips move slightly, and the blond boy leaned forward to catch the barely whispered words.

“I can’t…” Levi started, and then stopped and fell silent again. After a moment, he took a deep breath and glanced back at Erwin before diverting his eyes again, eyebrows furrowed. “I can’t accept it.”

“Why?” the taller boy blurted out, incomprehension radiating from his brain. He usually understood Levi so well, but now he just didn’t get it. Erwin knew that giving things to the short boy was always tricky because of his obsession of not wanting to be in debt with anyone (except when it came to coffee, coffee was a whole different matter), but he had thought that he would make an exception for his birthday. It was a day where you were supposed to get things for free, right? “We made those clothes and blankets especially for you and the kids, so you would be warmer this winter,” he said, his voice sounding pitiful even for his own ears. The sentence didn’t ignite the expected reaction though, and Levi snapped his eyes back at him, anger covering his face again.

“Don’t,” he warned. “I can’t accept a gift of this kind anymore from you.”

Erwin looked at him in confusion.

“Anymore? What does that mean?”

This time it was the smaller boy who seemed confused.

“Last year?” Levi advanced. “The title deed?”

“What are you talking about?”

The dark-haired boy blinked at him a few times, and understanding suddenly flashed in Erwin’s mind. Memories of some of the papers his father let him go through in his office pushed themselves to the front of his mind, and things connected between them. He hadn’t paid much attention to the “change of landlord” paper, but now he distinctively recalled having seen Levi’s passed out father’s name on it, and a mention that in case of death the house should be given to Levi and Mikasa. He did have found it kind of odd back then because he was pretty sure he hadn’t seen that paper before the man died in the mine, but he had just put it on the fact that he had missed it.

He was apparently completely wrong.

“I wonder if I’ll ever be able to repay my debt, to you and your family.” the short boy suddenly said, barely more than a whisper, his eyes wandering somewhere at Erwin’s left. “Especially if you keep on giving me things.”

The blond boy looked at him and pondered for a moment. And then he reached for Levi’s hand and covered it with his own, startling the smaller boy and making him look up at him again.

“Levi,” Erwin firmly said. “You don’t owe me anything. And I don’t think I am mistaken when I say that my mother thinks exactly the same. She loves you a lot, you know.” The younger boy’s grey eyes were now fixing him intensely, and Erwin smiled softly at him, not turning away from his gaze. After a couple of seconds, the blonde boy slipped his fingers under Levi’s hand and lifted it slowly, leaning forward in the same time to drop a gentle kiss on the boy’s knuckles. “ _I_ love you, Levi.” The boy didn’t reply, but all trace of tension was now gone, letting a comfortable silence settle between them. Erwin glanced at their laced fingers resting above the package, still unopened between them. He caught Levi following his look, and the boy looked thoughtful for a moment. Then he shrugged and let out a sigh, landing his free hand on a side of the package.

“I guess it would be bad if you froze to death while hanging out at my place,” he stated with a small smirk, and Erwin beamed brightly at him, swiftly dropping another kiss on Levi’s hand. This time it earned him a little slap on the face though, but he didn’t care. If the rare sight of a true smile on Levi’s lips wasn’t worth it, he didn’t know what was.

 

*

 

“I’m home!” Erwin called, carefully removing the snow from his shoes before stepping in. He wasn’t as obsessive with cleanness as Levi was, but no one in the house wanted a puddle in the hall, just waiting for them to slip on it and break something. Actually, Mayor Smith had almost made a spectacular fall two years ago because of it, and since then everyone made sure that the snow stayed outside, as pretty as it was. Speaking of the mayor, Erwin noticed that his father’s long winter coat was hanging at the wall, which was odd because he was pretty sure he wasn’t supposed to be home before the day after.

“Oh, Erwin, we were waiting for you!” Anthony called from the living-room. His voice sounded extremely cheerful, making Erwin raise an eyebrow and wonder what kind of miracle of life his father had witnessed to be in such a good mood. Not that Mr Smith was a gloomy man, it was more that his brain seemed to be constantly wired on dealing with various problems, which made his casual expression quite intimidating. But Erwin was glad to know that there were still things that made his father’s inner world a bit brighter, even if he honestly had no idea what it was.

“So, how was your day, son?” the mayor asked when Erwin stepped in the living-room, his face still red from the time he had spent outside. The man was sitting in the couch in front of the TV, and Erwin also spotted his mother sitting at the table, a book in her hands. She looked up and the boy lifted a hand to wave at her – before stopping mid-air when he noticed the expression she was wearing. Elena was biting her lips slightly and her brows were furrowed nervously, which was quite uncommon of her. She quickly gave her son a small smile though, but Erwin wasn’t fooled. Something was wrong, and he felt a cold weight settle in his stomach.

“Hanging out with Levi and his gang again?” Mr Smith suddenly asked with a plain voice, making his son startle and snap his eyes at him. Erwin felt his heart pace suddenly speed up with panic when he saw the deep frown and his father’s face, and he couldn’t help but wonder with dread if the mayor had finally decided that he didn’t want his son to spend his free time with the lost children of the Seam and their short and strange leader. The boy frantically looked at the man’s features, trying to see whether there was any sign of anything that could give him a hint on his father’s motives. But before he could get anywhere, Mr Smith suddenly burst out laughing, almost making Erwin jump backwards in surprise.

“What’s with this face, Erwin? You look like someone just kicked your puppy in front of you,” the mayor joked, smirking at him. “I’m not going to forbid you from seeing your friends, give me a little credit.”

At these words, the worried confusion Erwin had felt almost immediately vanished; he let out a small sigh of relief and grinned back at his father.

“You scared me,” he laughed, still a bit nervously, but feeling relief flood through his whole system. But after a few seconds, Erwin noticed his mother looking at them in silence, and her expression washed away his smile and assurance as quickly and effectively as an angry wave. The boy caught his father glancing at his wife and then back at him again, and his eyes took a harder appearance.

“Erwin, you know I just met with the other mayors yesterday,” the man slowly began, tone completely serious and his usual frowning expression back. “I have some news. Here.” He leaned forward to grab a paper on the small glass table in front of him and handed the scroll to his son. But before Erwin could unroll it, his mother’s voice suddenly raised from the other side of the room.

“Erwin, before you read this, I want you to know that the decision is entirely yours. Your father and I won’t force anything on you.”

The boy froze at these words and looked up at Elena, his heart racing again. His brain was furiously analysing what his parents had just said, pulling every piece together and trying to get some sense out of it.

And then something clicked, and Erwin snapped his eyes back at his father. The man seemed to have noticed it, because he extended an arm and softly but firmly and landed a strong hand on his son’s shoulder.

“You are a big boy now, Erwin. I am sure that more than one would say that this is a decision way too important for a fifteen-year-old to take, but you are not an ordinary teenager, are you?” Anthony smiled encouragingly, squeezing his shoulder lightly. “This is a unique occasion, think carefully. It won’t present itself anytime soon. Don’t miss it to the child still lingering in you.”

Erwin felt his heart sinking deeper and deeper the more it appeared that his suspicion was probably right, but still nodded numbly after a moment. He stared down at the rolled up scroll in his hand, and looked up at his parents again. Elena was staring back at him with an unreadable look, and Anthony was barely blinking, waiting for Erwin to read the paper and study his reaction.

Erwin already knew what the paper was about.

But a vice still crushed his heart painfully when he finally unrolled it and read the few neatly written lines on it.

 

*

 

Levi sighed loudly as soon as the teacher disappeared inside the building again, but not without having given them a final warning punctuated by the darkest look the boy had ever seen. The door slid close again with an air of finality, and Levi passed a tired hand on his face. He had dropped out of school two years ago, and there he was again, scolded by his former teacher and forced to apology to the parents of some whiny prick who couldn’t assume his own acts.

“I’m sorry,” a little voice said with hesitation next to him.

“Don’t be. You did great,” Levi replied, putting a hand on Mikasa’s silken hair and comfortingly patting her head. “I’m pretty sure that brat won’t bother Armin anymore for a good moment now.” He was rewarded by a small relieved and proud smile from his sister, which was already great. The boy then carefully reached down to take her hand in his and frowned at the few red scorches on her knuckles. It would need a few days to heal completely, but it first needed disinfection and treatment.

“Go find Petra,” Levi told her. “She’ll take care of this and give you some bandage.” The little girl nodded without a word, and Levi let go of her hand and watched her trot away, her long red scarf and black hair floating behind her. She disappeared behind a corner, and Levi sighed deeply again, letting his head drop in his hands. He was feeling very tired lately, partly because he had ended catching a small cold himself, but also because of a lot of little things that probably weren’t much, but which importance were somehow intensified by the constant state of vague irritation his illness kept him in – when it didn’t make him crawl in bed and pray for the quick return of spring, that was. It was almost March already, why the hell was it still snowing here? Levi wanted to stop feeling like his nose was going to freeze and fall down whenever he went outside, seriously.

“Hey, what are you doing here?”

Levi startled and turned back to face the person who had just accosted him, a deep frown on his face and hands fisted in a ball, his sickness induced irritation suddenly jumping up to a peak for no reason.

“Wow, easy there!” Gunther laughed, lifting his hands in front of him in the universal sign of peace. Levi’s face immediately softened and he relaxed, kind of feeling stupid for his violent reaction.

“Sorry,” he apologized with a sigh. “I got a lot on my nerves lately.”

“Meh, tell me about it, there’s a true epidemic of flu at school.”

“And you’re still not sick?”

“Na, I’m a survivor!” Gunther beamed with a laugh, and Levi shook his head in amused disbelief. “So, what are you doing here? Thought it was time to come back to sing the glory of the Capitol with the rest of us?”

The taller boy’s bitter tone didn’t escape Levi, and he looked up, all trace of amusement gone. He knew that things weren’t going easily for him and Petra at home. He rarely even saw the butchers anymore, and even if Petra told him that their parents were lying sick in bed, Levi knew that there was something else. It wasn’t just physically illness, he knew that they hadn’t been the same, not ever since Erd died.

Not ever since Erd was pitilessly murdered in public.

Levi gritted his teeth and took a deep breath, closing and opening his fists a couple of times. It had been months, but there were things that one just couldn’t forget, and his currently sensitive nerves weren’t helping at all. His sudden anger didn’t escape Gunther though, and the boy shook his head sadly, an air of defeat and resignation on his face. After a moment, Levi felt his rage retreat away and he breathed in silently, the cold air helping him focus.

“No,” he replied to Gunther’s original question. “Some brat bullied Armin so Mikasa beat the shit out of him. Punched him in the mouth and broke a few teeth. The teacher called me in because I’m apparently all the kids’ legal representative or something.” He saw Gunther raise an eyebrow. “Don’t ask, I have no idea.” Levi quickly muttered, even if he actually had a very good idea how the hell he somehow became a legal adult at thirteen years old. Damn Smiths.

“Hey, isn’t that Erwin?” Gunther suddenly asked, making Levi startle. The taller boy was looking past his shoulder, and Levi turned back, following his gaze. A few meters away, Erwin was slowly walking down the stairs of the school, his bag loosely hanging at his side and his eyes lost somewhere in his thoughts. He didn’t even glance at them when he passed by, mechanically taking the direction of his house. Gunther started opening his mouth to call him, but Levi stopped him with a glare. The other boy looked at him in confusion but didn’t protest, most probably because of the intimidating surprise effect, and they both just followed the mayor’s son slowly walking away with their eyes.

“Man, you could almost see dark clouds following him, what the hell is going on? You two are pretty close, right?”

Levi didn’t answer immediately, looking at Erwin’s exaggeratedly rigid back and his almost forced absently tranquil pace.

“He saw us.”

“What?”

The short boy glanced back at Gunther and shook his head slowly.

“He saw us,” he repeated. The other blinked in confusion and looked up at Erwin’s figure disappearing in a corner, then back at Levi again.

“Did you two fight or something?” Gunther frowned, and was answered by a little shake of head. “Then what the hell?”

Levi pondered for a moment. Erwin had been acting strangely for almost two weeks now, and even if an outsider’s eye wouldn’t have spotted it at first, Levi knew the blond boy way too well to have missed it. He hadn’t been willing to press the matter though, thinking that if Erwin wanted to talk about it he would, eventually. At first, it wasn’t that apparent anyway, and Levi just assumed that it was a small problem Erwin would deal with quickly and that didn’t deserve to be talked about. But then days passed by, and Levi caught the strange looks the blond boy sometimes shot him, as if he was pondering something and that Levi himself was the first equation of the system. It really upset him, and he tried to confront Erwin on it, but before he could get a proper answer the kids started happily and loudly calling Petra’s name as she was getting closer to the house, and they hadn’t had the occasion to talk about it again. It had happened two days ago, and Erwin hadn’t come to visit since then.

“I don’t know,” Levi muttered, and it was true.

He didn’t know, and he hated it.

 

*

 

“I’m home,” Erwin said as usual as he pushed the door open. No answer came and he sighed, taking his scarf and coat off to hang them on the wall. He stopped briefly when he noticed that his mother’s coat was there as well, a few wet spots left by thawed snowflakes still visible on the sleeves. He looked around him but the tall lady was nowhere to be seen.

“Mom?” he called out, and once again only silence replied. After a few seconds, he finished hanging his things and carefully stepped in the living-room, frowning and body ready for whatever situation that might present itself. He relaxed immediately though when he spotted his mother sitting by the window near the garden, staring at a picture in her hand. She didn’t even react when Erwin walked next to her, and only looked at him with a startle when he softly called her again.

“Mom, are you alright?”

The lady blinked a few times, then gave him a small smile.

“Sorry, I didn’t hear you coming in.”

She looked down at the picture, and turned it back to show it to her son. Erwin looked closely at the girl on it, and he noticed the similarities her young face had with his mother’s.

“Is that Aunt Maria?”

Elena nodded slightly, turning the picture toward her again. Erwin stepped behind her chair and crouched down, softly covering his mother’s hand and squeezing it lightly. The lady looked at him and smiled a little wider than before, and Erwin smiled back at her before setting his head on her arm and looking at the picture again.

“She would be thirty-seven today,” Elena whispered, delicately tracing the girl’s face with her thumb. “It’s been twenty years already.”

Erwin didn’t reply, knowing that his mother wasn’t expecting an answer anyway. Twenty years. His aunt Maria died almost twenty years ago during the 5th Hunger Games. His mother had barely been fifteen back then, just like him right now; and she had been forced to watch her sister been tortured and killed by a mad Career, slowly and screaming.

“You know, Erwin…” she started, but froze and shook her head as if she had already said too much. Erwin looked up at her curiously, inviting her to continue what she had begun to say. After a moment, Elena sighed and covered his hand with her own, looking in her son’s blue eyes with a hint of worry.

“I know it must sound ridiculous, but I keep thinking about this thing.” She didn’t clarify more; they both knew what she was talking about. “About which way is better for you.”

“I already made up my mind, mom,” Erwin softly replied, laying his cheek on his mother’s warm hand and staring out at the garden. They both stayed silent for a long moment, before Erwin’s voice filled the still air of the room again. “Do you think I am making the right choice?”

“I don’t think there is a right choice, Erwin,” Elena answered softly, a hint of sadness in her voice. “But I know it is the safest choice.”

“I will have more chances to be reaped than ever before, mom.”

“But the Careers are here. No child from the rich districts goes to the arena if they don’t want to. Another of their privileges we don’t enjoy out there.”

Erwin stayed silent, thinking about what she just said. Four regular Reaping papers, plus twelve ones for the tesserae he never bought but that would still be counted. His name sixteen times in the glass ball but without the risk of ever going to the arena.

It was the safest choice indeed. It was the _best_ choice, Erwin repeated for the umpteenth time in his head. He had to think about his future, and he clang at this thought like a drowning man to a wooden drift; he had to prepare his future, and in the cruel world he was living in he just couldn’t let any opportunity pass. Even if –

“When are you going to tell Levi?” Elena suddenly asked in a quiet voice, and Erwin felt his heart sink with a pang of pain and guilt.

“I don’t know,” he replied, almost a whisper, and his train of thoughts deviated towards the dark-haired boy, and he felt his resolution shake dangerously. His heart felt so heavy, and he had to gather all his will to push Levi away from his thoughts, to push his friend away – to push the boy he loved away.

_I am not a child anymore. This isn’t tangible. This isn’t concrete. I need to lay a real path for my future._

And Erwin repeated this mantra again and again in his head, until his heart calmed down and he felt like he was making the right choice once again. And when he reached that state, he just closed his eyes and tried to empty his head, just focusing on his mother’s silent breath above him and the warmth of her hand under his cheek.

 

*

 

Levi stared down at the paper stuck at the spot in the central place for a long long time, his brain trying to proceed what was written on it and what implications it had. His heart was beating madly in his chest, and he was sure that his blood wasn’t supposed to make so much noise going through his ears.

And the words kept dancing in front of his eyes, as if taunting him, challenging him to find another explanation for Erwin’s odd behaviour than what he already knew was the truth, blatantly looking at him in the face in neatly printed letters.

 

**_Peacekeepers Special Recruitment Session_ **

 

_In honour of the First Quarter Quell, the President and the authorities of District 2 have decided to extend the opportunity to join our beloved country’s armed forces to all districts in this special recruitment session. Every single citizen from age 12 to 30 is invited to present themselves on March 10 th at the Training School in District 2 to undergo an entrance exam. If received to said exam, the candidate will be granted a full citizenship of District 2 for themselves, as well as for their parents and siblings who will be housed in a dwelling offered by the generous Administrative Council of the District._

_The new recruits will also have the honour to parade before the announcement of the First Quarter Quell on March 30 th._

_As to be fair to inhabitants who enjoy a citizenship of District 2 by right of birth, every recruit and their relatives aged from 12 to 18 will be considered to have bought tesserae for each member of the family they are bringing with them for every year since age 12._

_Glory to the President,_

_Glory to our fatherland,_

_Glory to Panem._

 

“Levi.”

The boy froze but didn’t turn back, and instead just started walking away with rapid steps, taking one street after the other, trying to calm the horrible sound of his heartbeat resonating in his ears like an orchestra of unsynchronized drums. He didn’t stop until he had reached the woods, and he heard Erwin’s footsteps quietly come to a stop two or three meters behind him. Levi closed his eyes and leaned heavily on a tree, his fists clenched so hard that he was sure he had made himself bleed. After a moment, he heard Erwin tentatively call him again.

“Levi, I –”

“Don’t,” the short boy stopped him immediately, raising a hand to accentuate his order. After a long moment, Levi took a deep breath and slightly turned back, just enough to get a good view of Erwin’s face. As he had expected, the blond boy’s features were completely unreadable, but deep down he knew that Erwin was doing the same as he was: blocking out the feelings, building a dam to avoid drowning in the furious waves of pain and betrayal that threatened to overwhelm him.

“Is this why you haven’t come to visit the last five days?” Levi quietly asked, his calm voice even surprising him. Erwin simply nodded and looked away, and the gesture made Levi’s heart sink. But immediately after, he just felt a wave of anger rise in him, and he stomped in front of Erwin and grabbed his face to make him look at him in the eyes. The blond boy startled but didn’t resist, and soon enough Levi was diving in his blue eyes for the umpteenth time, looking for any sign of emotions hiding behind them.

“Why didn’t you talk to me? Did you think that I wouldn’t understand?” Levi asked before thinking, and he couldn’t hide the pain in his voice. The anger was starting to vanish as quickly as it had appeared, only leaving a bitter taste in his mouth and resentment in his heart; so much resentment, not that much for the decision Levi knew Erwin had already taken, even if it did send waves of pain in him that he didn’t want to dwell on, but rather for the fact that Erwin had left him out of it – that he hadn’t considered Levi worthy of talking to about that matter. “Don’t you trust me?” the short boy whispered in a shaking voice, and he could see something break in Erwin’s eyes. Far from giving him any hint of satisfaction, it only made Levi’s own heart sink deeper, and he could feel his inner dam cracking open, letting more emotions rush through him.

And suddenly, Erwin’s arms were around him and Levi felt him hunch forward to bury his face in his neck.

“I trust you,” Erwin whispered in his ear, simply and honestly. “I trust you more than anyone else.”

“Then why?”

“I was scared. I was weak. I’m sorry.”

Levi frowned and pulled back a little, looking at Erwin’s eyes. The boy just stared back at him, not trying to hide his emotions anymore; and Levi could just read his face like an open book, and he understood him so much and so perfectly, and it was even worse because it would have been so much easier if he could just blame him blindly and yell at him.

He still blamed him and wanted to yell at him though; but he felt like that it just wasn’t the moment for it.

“You already made up your mind, didn’t you?”

“Yes.”

A short silence.

“When are you leaving?”

“In three days.”

Three days. Seventy-two hours. Levi closed his eyes a moment, letting the information sink in. Three days could be a long time; but it was also way too short.

Too short to let any second go to waste.

“Are you coming for dinner tonight?” Levi asked quietly, looking back at the blond boy. Surprise flashed through Erwin’s eyes, but almost immediately after his lips curled up in a tender smile, and Levi could almost physically see relief surge through him.

“Okay,” the blond boy simply replied, and they both knew that there wasn’t much to talk about anymore. Then Erwin softly cupped Levi’s face in his big warm hands and leaned forward to kiss him, and the shorter boy just decided to hush the gloomy clouds he could see closing on him away, just savouring the moment before it was gone forever. He could still feel the pain lingering around his heart though, not gone and just standing by, waiting to crush him if he let his guard down. But Levi was decided not to let this happen.

At least not for the three following days.

_Three days._

He closed his eyes and grabbed Erwin’s hair, pulling him closer.

They only had three days.

 _Three days before the clock would strike midnight,_ a little voice chanted in Levi’s head.

 

Three days before this wonderful page of his life would be over.

 

 


	6. Chapter Five

 

 “Hey, Smith, you sure you don’t want to go back to your district before the Reaping? It would suck soooo much if you died wearing 2’s colours.”

Laughs. Whistlings. Hoarse snickers. More laughs.

Erwin barely even acknowledged the group of mocking boys passing behind him as he was waiting for the elevator in the Training School’s living quarters. He didn’t even have the will to sigh.

“Tch, jealous shits,” he heard Nanaba spit next to him. “When I think they are going to have the right to carry weapons. But well, I guess you can always try to starve them and see if anything good comes out then,” she added with a smirk. Erwin couldn’t help but smile back.

“We start the plan whenever you are ready, Chief,” he replied with a wink, making Nanaba laugh loudly.

The elevator arrived with a clear “ding!”, and they let a group of students get out before they slipped inside. Nanaba left him at the second floor, wishing him a good evening and good night, and he waited alone for the elevator to climb to the last floor. The rooms reserved for the recruits coming from the outer districts.

There were fifty of them, most of whom came from 4, separated in rooms of five people. They had quickly split into two groups, the trainees from the fishing district in one, and the rest of them in the other. It wasn’t that the recruits from 4 weren’t friendly, it was just that they had immediately started sticking together and had missed the “poor districts guys mating call”; which was an actual ridiculous name Nile Dawk from 3 had come up with – in case anyone was wondering –, but no one had been willing to make the effort to find a better one. They were almost the only friends Erwin had: coming from the outer districts was like going around with a target and “bully me!” in flashing lights above your head, and the fact that he was the only one from 12 didn’t improve his situation.

The fact that he was top of most of the classes and truly attractive didn’t help at all either. A gifted and handsome kid from the poorest district of the country. He never thought that he would ever find himself in such a cliché situation, but he could only cause three reactions from his fellow trainees: love, hate; or vague indifference. But when the popular kids from 1 and 2 were throwing crumpled papers at him, it was hard not to follow their example.

Erwin hated mass effects like that.

Besides their weird committee of social losers, he only had three close friends: Nanaba, an energetic girl from 2 a few months younger than him who had once challenged him during their shooting session and had never left his daily life since then, her giant and quiet boyfriend Mike, and a member of the Research Department going by the name of Hanji, an eccentric scientist with crazy hair who had just one day decided to sit across from Erwin at the self and started talking to him without any further introduction. They had somehow wrested the story of his life out of him, and were now regularly making inside jokes about his Peacekeeper exploit, despite almost all being in training to become one.

He had never told them about Levi, though.

It was his secret. And he wasn’t willing to share it with anyone, as friendly as they were.

 

The door to his dorm slid open in front of him, and Erwin dropped his books on his bed before heavily sitting down on the hard mattress with a deep sigh. The last three years of his life had left their marks on him, offering him extra height and muscles and turning the last roundness of his childhood into sharp features and bones, but also leaving a set of nice juvenile wrinkles on his face. Erwin felt both full of energy and incredibly old, and his grumpy grandpa side just wanted to slump down on his bed and never get up again. He indulged the first part and buried his face in his pillow, but resolutely planned on getting up later. Some day. Maybe.

“Already tired, Smith?”

Erwin’s muffled grunt came out from his pillow.

“Leave me alone, Nile.”

“Not sure daddy would appreciate seeing you like this.”

The blond boy groaned again, but gathered enough will to turn his head and face the older guy.

“Fuck off, Dawk.”

Nile opened and closed his mouth in a ridiculous way, but his surprised look soon melted into an obnoxious grin.

“Ooooh,” he sarcastically whistled, bringing his hand to his chest and gaping exaggeratingly, obviously in some sort of mock reproduction of a heart attack, “Erwin Smith just said a very nasty word, what is happening? Is it the end of the world? But there are still so many things I wanted to do!” The man dramatically threw his arms up before his voice was abruptly stopped by a pillow landing with force on his face. “I will file a complaint for attempt of murder, just wait for it,” he threatened, getting the fluffy thing out of his nose, and then faked a panicked shriek when Erwin pretended to grab a book to throw it at him.

“Just shut up,” the blond boy replied, but he couldn’t suppress the small grin that had appeared on his face. He rolled over and spread his arms at both of his sides, staring straight at the ceiling with a sigh. He felt his bed sink when the other boy sat on it, letting his pillow drop on his chest.

“Is what happened yesterday still troubling you?” Nile softly asked after a moment, all trace of teasing gone from his voice.

Erwin didn’t reply immediately, images of the horrible paintings on his parents’ house flashing in front of his eyes. When the official list of admitted trainees had been published, the Smith couple had stayed back just the time for a new mayor to be nominated and settled before they packed all of their belongings and joined with their son in 2. Former Mayor Smith had been beaming with pride, and Elena also profusely congratulated Erwin, even if he still caught a hint of sadness and uncertainty lingering in her voice. They then settled in the house the authorities had allocated them, and had slowly begun a small trade of little handmade home decorations on the ground floor. It wasn’t very expanded, but it was enough for them and it made them recall their youth, before Anthony had become mayor. Erwin had never seen his parents so close and happy, and he had started to think that it wasn’t going to be so bad, after all.

At first, it hadn’t been. Everyone in the Training School was a bit wary of the District’s foreigners, but they were forced to live in the same place for the whole time of their training anyway, so no one really caused any problem: just the occasional spiteful snicker, but barely anything more. And then Erwin started acing one class after another, and he flew right into the school’s nobility radars. Just the mere fact that the existence of such a childish unofficial cast system was a thing would have made Erwin laugh – if it hadn’t completely degenerated a few days ago. He could bear the mockery, he could bear the humiliating pranks, he could bear people he barely knew looking down at him and treating him like trash just because they felt like he threatened their supremacy with his very existence – even if he really couldn’t be less interested in sitting at the cool kids’ table.

But when they realized that they weren’t affecting him, they had started targeting his parents. They called for a boycott on their shop, and everyone was just too afraid of the bullies’ families’ influence not to follow them. Erwin had been horrified when he had found out, but his mother assured him that it was okay, that they had saved as much money as they could and that it would sustain them until things calmed down.

They didn’t calm down. Two days later, Anthony woke up to find their shop’s walls painted with hateful messages. _Die, 12-boy. No one will help you._ They covered the red paint as quickly as they could, but pictures were already circulating around, and someone had pinned one at Erwin’s dorm door. When Nile had found him staring at the photo with a blatant look of shock and horror, he had ripped it out of his hands and angrily torn it into pieces, a flow of insults freely leaving his mouth.

Dear Nile and his uncensored language.

Erwin looked up at the other man with a smile, but Nile was staring out the window. Erwin remembered distantly that there was a parade in the streets of the district, and the muffled noise he could hear through the building’s thick walls confirmed it. The pre-Reaping parade. A wave of sickness surged through him, and he tried to delete from his mind the picture of laughing people talking about kids mercilessly killing each other as if it were a very cheerful holiday. He just couldn’t understand how anyone could be feasting for such a horrible thing, and the disgusted frown on Nile’s face told him that he was thinking exactly the same.

Nile.

Erwin looked back at the ceiling, absently wondering what the older man was thinking right now. Neither of them really remembered how it had started, but they just ended sharing the weirdest relationship Erwin ever had. They spent most of their times arguing and metaphorically pulling each other’s hair, and then they would be drinking a glass like best friends forever, and before either realized it they would be back sneaking insults at each other again. It was all very confusing.

Erwin suddenly felt Nile’s hand softly cover his own, squeezing it lightly, and the blond boy glanced at their laced fingers. Yeah, that too. It was all a very fuzzy memory, but one morning he had woken up with Nile’s breath in the back of his neck and one of his arms around him as if it belonged there. Naked. It had led to a lot of awkward and embarrassed meetings the following days and a lot of snickers from their roommates, but eventually they had both agreed to have a serious chat about it, and things had settled down surprisingly well.

They weren’t lovers. But they couldn’t deny either that it wasn’t exactly friendship they had. Hanji had popped out from absolutely nowhere behind them and whispered “friends with benefits” in their ears before sliding away like a crab in the corridor with the most obnoxious grin ever. Except for completely freaking both of them out, that intervention hadn’t really helped them figure things out. They just didn’t know how to define their relation. There were too many opposite feelings going between them, from hate to desire with a strong hint of mutual annoyance. The only thing they were sure about was that in time of need, one would be here to listen and support the other.

“Erwin, if you let them get to you, these fuckers win,” Nile suddenly spat, brows angrily furrowed above his narrow eyes.

“I know,” Erwin sighed after a short moment. “But it’s not just me anymore, what do you think they are going to do next time? Kidnap my parents?”

Nile didn’t reply. They both knew that as ridiculous as it sounded, that was actually a real possibility. Some of these jealous people were ready to do anything to keep Erwin from majoring his promotion during the final exams, only a few weeks away. Apparently, getting academically beaten by a guy from 12 was the most humiliating thing that could ever happen in their miserable lives. Erwin had loudly considered voluntarily bringing his results down the last time he had visited home during a holiday, but his father had taken him by the shoulders and made him promise that he would never, ever, give in the pressure. His mother had simply nodded, firmly putting a hand on his shoulder, a burning determination in her eyes. It had been enough to boost Erwin back up. His parents didn’t need his protection. And he wasn’t going to fail their hopes.

But that had happened over a month ago, and now he could feel his determination starting to wear off again.

“I wonder if it wouldn’t be easier if I was just reaped tomorrow.”

He felt Nile froze, and realized that he had phrased his thought out loud, which was very unlikely of him. He usually always had a perfect control on what passed his lips.

“Even if you were, a Career would take your place anyway,” the other man replied. “Just like they did for me,” he added quietly after a short silence.

Erwin looked up at him for a few seconds, and reported his attention back on the boringly white ceiling. Nile had come with his parents and three sisters, and had his name on a ridiculous number of papers. One of them had come out the glass ball two years ago for his sixth Reaping, but Nile hadn’t even had the time to register what had happened that a Career had volunteered to take his place.

“I’m not sure they would do that for me,” Erwin stated.

No answer came, and he knew that Nile was also thinking about the message on the Smiths’ shop. _Die, 12-boy. No one will help you._

“Who knows? Those Careers have their own way of thinking,” he still replied after a while. But Erwin knew that it was most probably a hollow hope. The Careers had families too, and everyone in the District was bowing in front of the Administrative Council, whose offspring were currently having fun making Erwin’s life a living hell.

“I guess we’ll see tomorrow,” he simply shrugged, but his blue eyes were far from being as nonchalant as he wanted to appear. The more he thought about it, the more that message’s meaning was clear and apparent to him. He was eighteen now, it would be his last Reaping. Their last chance to get rid of him without dirtying their hands.

Their last chance to let the system do it for them.

_But I know it is the safest choice._

A bitter laugh suddenly escaped Erwin’s lips, and he started snickering like a madman on his bed, hiding his eyes and the tears he could feel threatening to show themselves behind his arm. He could almost feel Nile staring at him from above without a word, but Erwin didn’t care, and they both just stayed still in the empty room, the silence only broken by the blond boy’s strangled laughs.

 

 

*

 

The next morning, Erwin barely listened to the overly painted speaker from the Capitol making her usual speech about the Dark Days, the creation of the Games, and so on and on and on. A girl was called, but another one immediately volunteered. The District’s Escort then made some loud comments about how ladies of 2 were as brave as usual and asked for a round of applause from the crowd, who excitedly indulged. She then bounced on her illogically high heels to the glass box containing the boys’ names, and dug her hand in it, wearing a ridiculous “what a suspense!” face. Erwin tapped his fingers against his leg with annoyance, just wanting her to hurry up, to get that masquerade over. He was at least ninety percent sure that no matter how many times she picked a paper in the ball, the same name would appear again and again.

“And for the gentlemen… Erwin Smith!” the Escort announced in her mic, her scarlet lips widely extended in a smile that just gave the impression that she had a very bizarre and creepy bloody wound in the middle of her face. Immediately, every eye turned towards the blond boy, and a heavy silence fell on the place. Erwin didn’t even make the effort to twitch the corner of his mouth, angrily keeping his completely blank expression in place. He had felt completely helpless the night before after the realization had fully sunk in him, completely lost and miserable. But now he was just mad. Mad at these kids and their ill-placed vanity, furious and disgusted of these people cheering for young lives to be ended in blood, angry at absolutely everything and getting the energy to face them all from his fury. If they wanted to see him cry, they could go fuck themselves. Politely or not. Somewhere above his head, Erwin heard cameras buzzing closer, trying to catch any change of expression and broadcasting his face on the giant screen behind the stage, the images relayed to every station throughout the districts.

Throughout all of Panem.

A sudden thought flashed in his mind, and he almost lost control of his features.

The Reaping was followed by everyone in the country, from the golden benches of the Capitol to the dusty central place of District 12. Erwin remembered having himself stood in the big square through three whole Reapings, as straight as a stick, just another boy in white waiting in front of the sacrificial shrine. He had seen all the other districts’ tributes being called one after another, until the giant screen finally showed their district’s Escort, and the whole process was repeated for a twelfth time, and two other young people were sent to their death.

He remembered having being there for Levi’s first Reaping. He remembered the fear in the boy’s eyes, barely visible but still there; Erwin had discreetly laced their fingers together despite the interdiction of physical contact during the ceremony, softly soothing the younger boy with his thumb. And Levi had arched an annoyed eyebrow at him, but hadn’t pulled away, a very small smile floating on his lips as he had gratefully squeezed Erwin’s hand back.

Erwin felt the little chest where he had locked everything related to the raven-haired boy in his heart starting to shake. He hadn’t cried a single time after he had left the district, not in the train, not in his bed, not the morning after or any morning that had followed. He had done what he was so good at doing: he had built a dam inside his heart, and always violently repressed the first buds of pain when they appeared. He didn’t want his past to be a hold-back. But more than this, he just knew that if he started lingering on it, he would never escape it. So he had carefully stored all those months of his life in a safe place in his heart, and had firmly locked the lid.

But now, Erwin could feel the chest cracking open, just enough for a few memories to forcefully push themselves in the front of his mind, and the ghost of his past happiness silently passed through his heart, making it ache in longing.           

He used to spend so many hours of his days in that little house, crowded with noisy and laughing children. He used to tell them stories and listen to Petra singing lullabies for them. The young girl’s visits had always been eagerly-awaited events, and Levi was even more merciless than usual with the kids’ hygiene and clothes on these days, to their greatest dismay and Erwin’s greatest amusement.

Erwin used to smile and laugh with them, sharing a simple meal sitting on the hard floor of the house, Levi’s shoulder brushing against his. He remembered Eren and Armin’s excitement whenever he brought an old toy or a book for them, Connie and Sasha’s lame jokes and that one time they had yelled something in the lines of “Are you making babies?” when they had caught the two older boys lying in the grass behind the house, Levi’s head resting peacefully on Erwin’s chest.

The blond boy’s heart throbbed painfully at the memories, and he discreetly clenched his fists behind his back, teeth gritted behind his closed lips.

He used to be so happy.

And now, he was going to die. He was going to die for some sick rich people’s entertainment, and his parents were going to watch his agony from their little shop.

Levi was going to watch him die on that giant screen.

The calm armour Erwin had built around him cracked, and he felt tears of anger and frustration threatening to escape his eyes. Why hadn’t he stayed in District 12? He could have chosen him and Levi instead of this disappointing future that had deceived him. He could have –

A large hand dropped on his shoulder, and Erwin startled just a bit. He slowly turned his head and met Mike’s unreadable eyes, a few centimetres above him. The giant didn’t talk, but gave him a strong and sharp nod, his hand a firm anchor to reality. Besides being an excellent trainee and a good advisor, Mike never felt the urge to talk when it wasn’t necessary, and Erwin appreciated him a lot for that. He silently breathed deeply, and chastened himself for letting panic take the best of him in this crucial moment.

Even if he wasn’t in the arena yet, the Games had started for him. From now on, anything he would do and say would be recorded; any frown and change of expression would be analysed and converted into sponsorship, and therefore chances of survival.

He was probably going to die. But it didn’t mean that he was going to just lie down and wait for someone to dig a knife through his heart.

It didn’t mean that he wasn’t fully determined to fight until the very end.

 

“Well, it seems like there is no volunteer this time?” the Escort half-asked half-stated, surprise in her voice. After a short silence, she shrugged and smiled brightly, gesturing at Erwin to get on the stage. “It appears that this year we have found a worthy tribute at first try! The odds are definitely in our favour, don’t you think so?” she laughed in her mic. _If you knew_ , Erwin thought bitterly.

The blond boy breathed deeply again, and looked at the cameras buzzing around his head. He could see from the corner of his eyes that the crowd was slowly parting in front of him, creating an alley large enough for him to walk without bumping into anyone.

But before meeting with his gloomy-looking future, he had something to do. Something that suddenly seemed really important to him. He felt his heart starting racing in his chest, every beat seemingly anchoring it deeper in him, telling him to go on and fight.

Erwin fixed his eyes on a particularly large round camera, and stared straight at it, past it, past the crowd, past the mountains, the plants and the crop fields. He thought of Levi wearing his immaculate white shirt looking at him at this very instant, his hands behind his back and standing as straight as the broom he used both to clean the house and to hit him, depending on the context. The memory of one of those particularly painful encounters pushed itself in his mind, and Erwin couldn’t help a fond smile forming on his lips.

_Levi…_

He breathed deeply, and slowly mouthed two words at the recording device, at that boy he hadn’t seen for three years, living far away, literally at the other side of the world. That boy living in the poorest quarter of the poorest district of a twisted country, but who had survived against the odds. Who had changed his life and the lives of so many others during the best year of his existence.

_Remember me._

 

*

 

Levi heard Bertholdt gasp next to him. He didn’t need to turn his head to guess what kind of expression the tall boy was probably wearing, and he wasn’t even sure that his face looked any better himself at the moment. He felt Eren grab his sleeve with a sharp breath and glanced at the boy, catching Jean looking at him in distress in the process. All the kids had grown up a lot, unlike him who had had a very timid growth spurt that had just stopped altogether frustratingly quickly. He still wasn’t over the huge false hope that it had given him, and used to pest a lot about it. He had abruptly stopped, though, the day he had realized that his complaining only made Bert feel more horrible about himself than he already did. The tall boy’s lack of self-esteem truly saddened Levi, and he didn’t want him to feel bad for something he didn’t have control over, and which was even an actual asset for him. Bertholdt had such an amount of unused potential in him, Levi sometimes wanted to cry out of frustration seeing him just huddled somewhere and not daring exploring it. But he knew that yelling at the boy wasn’t a solution, and he just hoped that Reiner would slowly get him out of his shell and allow him to really thrive. Erwin had managed to make some real progress in his time, but his leaving had been a true setback for Bertholdt. Levi had childishly blamed the blond boy for a long while, but he knew that he was unfair and that his resentment wasn’t just about Bert’s condition.

“It can’t be…” he heard Armin whimper with a broken voice behind him.

Levi didn’t turn back to look at him. What could he tell him anyway? Some comforting shit like that Erwin would be okay? That would be the biggest lie ever. He heard a muffled sob somewhere above him, and saw from the corner of his eyes Reiner’s hand tighten around Bert’s. Levi felt too numb to even tell them to stop in case a Peacekeeper saw them.

 

It had been three years. The night before Erwin’s leaving, they all had had dinner together and had joked and laughed as usual, the kids completely unaware that it was going to be the last time they would see the mayor’s son in their circle. The morning after, Levi had resumed his daily activities, as if nothing had happened. When evening had come and Eren had asked him about the blond boy’s whereabouts with a concerned look, he had replied plainly that Erwin was gone, that his future wasn’t here with them, that he was called to fulfill a better destiny far away, in District 2. The kids had looked at him in shock and asked a lot of questions and cried a lot, but he had eventually managed to send them to bed without making too much of a scene.

Levi hadn’t felt anything for days, mostly living in automatic pilot and only turning his brain on if really needed. Sometimes he would do the dishes and turn around expecting to see Erwin handing him a towel. Other times he would pass in front of the mayor’s house and see an illusion of the blond boy waving at him from his window. Every time, he would feel something sting inside of him, but not much more. People around him always looked at him with compassion and would tell him that they were sorry, as if Erwin were dead. He was, in a certain way. He would never come back. Ever again. And even if he did set foot again in the District, it would be in a white Peacekeeper uniform. Peacekeeper Erwin Smith.

But his Erwin was gone.

He had chosen the opportunity to live in a better place than District 12, and Levi kept on thinking that it was the choice any person with a hint of good sense would make, and Erwin had a lot of good sense. Maybe would he enjoy a long comfortable life after his years of service, and Levi could only wish him the best.

But then, one day, that mantra he kept chanting in the background of his head suddenly felt completely insufferable, and it hit him all at once. Pain. Anger. Betrayal. It washed over him like a furious wave, and he felt himself get carried away.

The young boy let himself drift for a couple additional days. He allowed himself to resent Erwin, to resent him for the sad looks in the kid’s eyes, for Bertholdt isolating himself even more. For abandoning them.

For abandoning him.

Levi cried and broke a few things when no one was around. He went out the barriers and shot a few small preys and a lot more trees with the forgotten stolen guns, the guns that had started it all. And then dumped them in a river in a fit. But as Levi watched them being carried away by the current, he panicked and ran after them, tripping on some roots and falling heavily on the wet mud, cutting his palms on sharp stones. And he helplessly watched the guns disappear in a fall, carrying some part of him away with them. When he came back, no one questioned his dirty clothes and bleeding hands and red hollow eyes.

And then the anger was gone, and he felt empty.

A few days later, the announcement of the First Quarter Quell was upon them.

The Capitol came out with a new atrocity that year, and people were asked to vote for the two kids they would send in the arena. All over Panem, mothers and fathers cried, hugging their children close, promising them that they wouldn’t let them been sent away. Horrible alliances started to form, and people pointed fingers at the mischievous kids. Old resentments came back to life, children told their parents about what that classmate had once done to them, and everyone looked for scape goats, for two miserable kids to sacrifice instead of their own. Parents turned into monsters, ready to send two innocent souls who hadn’t really started living yet to a violent death, if it meant giving their children another year.

It didn’t happen in District 12 though.

In the poorest and dirtiest district of all Panem, two children joined hands and knocked at people’s doors, telling them that their little ones wouldn’t have to die that year, that they just had to write their two names on the paper when the Reaping would come. A young girl and a young boy who had lost their parents barely a fortnight ago, two young people who had seen what losing a son had done to them.

“We don’t want you to ever experience this,” they said. And mothers and fathers cried and pulled their children against them, and they felt like monsters feeling relief surge through them, feeling relief to know that their little ones wouldn’t be sent to die yet. They felt like monsters when they dumped their papers in the urn, and when the Escort read out the same names again and again, her assistant drawing sticks on a board behind her, the chalk’s sound echoing like a lonely tolling bell in the silent square.

Most of them were unable to look when Petra and Gunther waved at them from the stage, faces serene and beautiful, little heroes who would never be remembered by anyone else. And then Petra had looked at Levi’s shocked face and smiled, almost shyly, and the boy had felt so angry, so angry at himself; so angry for focusing so much on his own misery that he hadn’t even noticed what his dearest friends were doing.

He went to visit both of them before their departure. Petra smiled at him, and told him that she would miss seeing the kids growing up. She knew that she wasn’t coming back. She was scared, but she didn’t regret what she had done. She then suddenly blushed and took his hand shyly, carefully dropping a small golden pin in his palm, telling him that it would bring him luck. Levi frowned and tried to hand it back, protesting that she needed luck more than him. The girl simply shook her head and carefully closed the boy’s fingers on the jewel, smiling encouragingly. And even after a Peacekeeper got in and walked him outside, Levi could still feel the young girl’s smile following him. Some of the kids were also waiting to visit her, and he just couldn’t bring himself to look at their red-rimmed eyes and hear their muffled sobs; and before he even realized it, he was outside, running away under the clear blue sky. When the barracks finally went out of sight, the young boy stopped and slowly opened his fingers, letting the pin shine warmly under the sunlight. He wondered how Petra had come in possession of such a precious thing. Maybe was it the result of a trade with a Peacekeeper? Levi studied the jewel for a moment, and tilted his head, wondering what it was representing. Some kind of bird on an arrow? And then it hit him.

It was a mocking jay.

 

The loud retransmission of a crowd clapping hands shook Levi out of his reverie. He blinked a few times at the screen, noticing that he had missed the tributes of 3 and was now watching the Career tributes of 4 being applauded with enthusiasm. Their smug smiles and the excitement of the public made him sick. He couldn’t help but start assessing whether Erwin stood a chance against them. Some part of him angrily thought that yes, those two little pricks didn’t have a chance against tall and handsome and smart Erwin. But the way they looked at the camera made him shift nervously on his feet. Careers always made him uneasy, how could anyone want to go in the arena? It was just beyond him.

_Remember me._

The two words resonated silently in his head. The day Levi had realized he couldn’t remember Erwin’s voice anymore had sent him into a temporary panic; but the part of him that had already become numb and resigned over every Erwin-related thing had quickly taken over again. It had still left another gaping hole in his heart.

Another hole among all the ones that had appeared in his short life.

But as the Escort of 5 dug her hand in the glass balls to condemn two other young people to death, a conversation he had had a long time ago with Erwin emerged from the back of his memory. A conversation that had marked his birthday, so many months ago.

_I wonder if I’ll ever be able to repay my debt, to you and your family._

And as the two tributes from 5 appeared on the screen, and then the ones from 6 and from 7 and from 8, Levi suddenly realized that he didn’t necessarily have to sit down and watch Erwin die, just like he had watched Petra being eaten by gigantic mutant fish and Gunther being slowly and painfully beheaded by a metallic wire trap, almost three years ago. His heart started beating faster, and the numbness he had felt earlier completely vanished. That was stupid, that was so stupid. But was it really?

Levi thought of Mrs Smith’s kind smile, of Mayor Smith’s convenient blind eye. And he thought of Erwin, of Erwin and his golden hair and his blue eyes he loved to look into, of his smiles, all of them, but especially the one he only let him see, allowing all his memories to flow through him again.

He realised what that moment was. It was an opportunity.

He looked at the kids around them, their nervous looks and pale faces. But they were all looking straight in front of them, still and heads high. Levi smiled fondly for himself, appreciating just how they had all grown up so much, not only physically but also mentally. They would be able to take care of themselves, he was convinced of that. They could face any situation and come out of it if they wanted to, if they just stuck together.

They were a family.

 

After what felt like an eternity, their Escort finally called a young girl to the stage, and Levi let out a sigh of relief, noticing that it wasn’t one of his little ones. He didn’t know what he would have done if it had been the case, but the odds seemed to have been in his favour for that one time. He clenched his fists, and silently took a deep breath.

“And now, the boys…” the Escort announced in her high-pitched voice, eagerly crossing the stage to the other glass ball, but was cut off before she could dig her hand in it.

“I volunteer.”

She froze and looked at the crowd, searching for the origin of the deep voice that had rung clearly and strongly through the square. After a few seconds of stunned silence, Levi saw everyone slowly turning towards him, eyes wide and mouths gaping. He could guess the boys’ reactions around him, but he didn’t turn to look at them. He couldn’t let his resolution waver just now.

On the other side of the place, the Escort was slowly regaining control of her mind and body, and after a few more blinks, flashed a bright smile at the cameras and started excitedly commenting over how what just happened was exceptional, “the first volunteer for District 12 ladies and gentlemen! This year promises to bring us very interesting Games!”, and frantically and widely gestured at Levi to come closer.

As the crowd slowly stepped out of his way, the Escort’s unstopping babbling turned into background sound, and Levi saw the shining cameras flying in his direction. He wondered what Erwin had felt when his name had been called. Had he been afraid? Had he been angry?

The young man looked up at the buzzing recording devices, and caught a zoom of his face on the giant screen.

_Remember me._

The corners of his lips curled up, and he mouthed his reply back.

 

_Always._

 

 


	7. Chapter Six

 

After three years of sleeping on a hard military bed, Erwin felt like he was floating on a cloud, lying on his back in his wagon-room in the train taking him to the Capitol. The journey wasn’t supposed to be very long, but in order to arrive more or less at the same time as the other tributes, the machine was advancing at a frustratingly slow speed. They had already left with a certain number of hours of late compared to the schedule Erwin remembered the train from 12 always went by, but it was clearly still not enough.

The ceiling and walls of his room had settled for a sea-side view, and he could even hear the distant sound of waves crashing on the sand. For some reason this drove on his nerves, and Erwin angrily extended an arm to smash the control board by his bed, hoping that he had hit the right button and hadn’t started the heating or something like that. He really didn’t want to have to stand up to get a good look at the board. To his relief, the ocean started fading away, and the green trees of a dense forest replaced it, bringing muffled songs of wild life with it. Better.

They had barely got into the train that their mentors had taken him and his fellow tribute Annie, a fourteen-year-old girl with unnerving icy blue eyes, to a first strategy meeting in the dining wagon. Well, more of an interrogation to be honest. The mentors looked very puzzled by his presence, since he hadn’t gone through the whole physical and strategy training they gave the Careers, but they decided that his Peacekeeper training was already a start. Erwin had felt the violent urge to flip the table in their faces and snarl that if they wanted to take his place then they were very welcome. _As if I chose to be here._ His mood was merrily doing loops between utter dismay and rage, and he didn’t like it at all. He couldn’t let his emotions cloud his judgment, not if he wanted to last at least a few days in the arena.

Not if he wanted to get out alive.

_Always._

Levi’s face flashed in front of his eyes again, and Erwin’s heart dropped. After a few strategy tips – that more or less summed up in “make an alliance with the other Careers and do what needs to be done to kill them before they kill you” –, his mentors had started asking him a lot of questions about his silent exchange with Levi during the Reaping. It wasn’t hard to make the connection: he was reaped, Levi volunteered, and he came from District 12. And even if they both intended to direct their words to the other, they still had been recorded and broadcast throughout the whole country, and it had sent the population in a frenzy of speculation and hypothesis.

“What is your relation with the tribute from 12?”

“What are his strong points? Weaknesses?”

“Is he dangerous?”

Erwin kept a stubborn silence through the whole interrogation, and it only stopped when Annie slammed the table, stating that this wasn’t going anywhere and that she was hungry and tired, and challenged anyone to contradict her. After a short silence, the mentors had sighed heavily and postponed the meeting, leaving the room but not without shooting a last look full of meaning at Erwin, who just glared back at them without a word.

“Upsetting the mentors is not a very wise choice, Smith.”

Erwin turned his head towards the blond girl, ready to snap back at her. But the expression she was wearing cooled him in a blink, and he couldn’t help but think that she and Mikasa could have been scary face sisters. The thought of the quiet dark-haired girl made his heart ache, and he suddenly felt all trace of anger leave him, just leaving a cold emptiness behind it. He sighed.

“I know.”

Annie stared at him for a while, and eventually pushed her chair backwards and stood up.

“I don’t know what exactly is going on, but your boyfriend must really love you a lot to have volunteered for you. Don’t let that go to waste.” She shot him a last glance and left the room, barely making more noise than a mouse. Erwin followed her small frame with his eyes, and her words echoed for a long time in his head.

She was right. He hadn’t expected at all Levi to make this move, but thinking back it shouldn’t have been that much of a surprise. The short boy had a thing for making hot-headed decisions, even if he always looked so cool and well thought out from the outside. 

He hadn’t changed at all.

Erwin remembered staring with horror at the giant screen when the cameras had closed on Levi’s face, when the speakers had carried the two terrible words he had said. He had seen the other boys’ expressions in the camera field, their young faces painted with shock, disbelief, despair. The cameras buzzing around Erwin would have certainly recorded a little more of his face mirroring theirs if Annie hadn’t hit him in the sides with her sharp elbow. The blonde girl was a mystery, and Erwin couldn’t find a way to understand what she was thinking. He didn’t get why she was helping him since he was going to be her enemy sooner or later anyway. Some part of him just wanted to brush it off, that Careers just had their own special way of thinking. But deep down, he had the feeling that there was something more. Something that was far beyond the arena and the Games.

 

A speaker in his walls sent out a particularly loud bird cry, tearing him out of his thinking. He blinked a few times at his surrounding, and passed a hand on his face, sighing. He felt that he was sighing a lot lately, and it made him feel even more tired than he already was.

The train was scheduled to arrive in the beginning of the afternoon, and they would be sent to be prepared for the Chariot Ride. Levi would be here, and Erwin had no idea what he should do or say. Everyone already knew that there was something special between them, should they therefore play on it and show that they were a team and that they were dangerous? The thought had barely formed in Erwin’s mind that he felt sick. He couldn’t turn whatever he had with Levi into a mere tool, it was too intimate, too private. He didn’t want it to be exposed to the greedy eyes of the Capitol. It was his and Levi’s, and only theirs.

The Capitol didn’t have the right to lay their dirty eyes on it.

Erwin smashed the control board again, and the forest disappeared. For a short moment he was worried that he had broken it, but soon a few bright dots started shining here and there. And a few seconds later, the whole room was covered by stars and galaxies, lazily moving around in a giant fluid orchestra. Erwin looked fascinated at the ceiling, his thoughts fraying away like fragile threads. His arm extended towards the faraway stars, like a toddler trying to reach the hanging toys above him. He was so small, so insignificant in all of this, why did it matter anyway, he was going to die and –

_No._

He snapped up and angrily pressed the OFF button on the board, effectively shutting down the scenery system, and the white simple walls reappeared again. He may just be another grain of sand in the vast universe. But he was still something, someone, and he refused to die like a trampled flower.

He refused to let Levi die for nothing.

He knew he could scream and beg him to let him go and go back to the kids who still needed him, but he knew Levi too much for that. Questioning his decision would only hurt him and he knew that he was already determined. His eyes told him so when he had looked at the camera, when he had looked at him. His eyes said that he wasn’t going back on his decision, and that nothing would make him do so.

That he trusted Erwin to honour him and not let his sacrifice be wasted.

Erwin’s heart throbbed painfully, and he let himself fall back on the soft pillows. Even if he tried reasoning himself, even if he clung at his logical part like a drowning man at a drifting piece of wood, his heart betrayed him.

He was scared. He was scared of watching Levi die, he was scared of having to take that decision when the moment would come.

He was scared of losing him again, knowing that it would be really definitive that time.

For the three years of his training, there had always been that little hope nagging at the back of his head, that he still had the possibility to go back home, to go back to 12. He could ask to be detached there, and even if it wasn’t ideal, the result would be there and he could see Levi again.

Not this time. There wasn’t any other hope.

They couldn’t both live.

If he died and Levi lived, he knew that the dark-haired boy would never forgive both him and himself.

If they both died, Levi’s life would be wasted, and Erwin refused to let that happen.

If Levi died and he lived…

His fists clenched on the silken blanket covering him, and he wished he could cry and scream and make that pain go away. But his eyes stayed desperately dry, and he stared for a long time at the plain ceiling, completely still, his mind drifting away without him finding the will to stop it. After what seemed like an eternity, he eventually fell into a restless sleep, where he saw the kids’ hollow eyes, judging him for leading their brother to death, clinging at him with their little hands, and his own hands were red, so red, so red of Levi’s blood…

 

*

 

It was taking Levi’s every ounce of self-control to the very last one to stay still on the cold table and not violently kick and bite the people in white around him. He hated being touched by strangers as a general rule, and especially by people with cat moustaches armed with weird things to poke him and track down and remove every hair present on his body. He still managed to go through the whole process without killing anyone, and he decided that he deserved another part of that delicious cake he had discovered on the train and smuggled with him into the preparation rooms. He found out to his greatest dismay that a shower of disinfectant wasn’t something the pastry appreciated, and reluctantly threw the rest away in what he thought was a bin with a pitiful look. What a shame.

He sat back on the metallic table and crossed his legs, scanning his surroundings for the thousandth time. There really wasn’t much to look at. White walls. White furniture. A lamp on the ceiling, not bright enough to truly hurt his eyes but not far from that limit either. _My house is more decorated than_ _that,_ he thought. And as soon as the thought formed in his mind, the boy felt his heart drop.

Levi had been forced to face his decision when the kids arrived to visit him before his leaving. The youngest ones had tried to force their way through the guarded door, but Mikasa calmed them down and told them to wait outside before they got hurt. She then closed the door behind her, and brother and sister stared at each other for a long while.

“You still love him, don’t you?” Mikasa asked, more a statement than a real question, and Levi didn’t answer. “You chose him over us.” She still wasn’t waiting for a reply. After a moment, Levi gestured at her to come closer, spreading his arms, and a second later, Mikasa’s body was against him and he wrapped his arms around her.

“Take care of them,” he breathed against her hair. He felt her nod against his chest, and they stayed like this for a long and too short moment, before Levi softly pushed her away and took her not-so-small-anymore hand in his. She was already almost the same height as him, and kept on growing every day. “Take care of yourself,” the boy added with a little smile. “You are going to do well.”

Mikasa just looked at him without a word, not letting the faintest emotion appear on her face. Levi was amazed by how much self-control his sister could show herself capable of, and he felt his heart beat with pride.

“Here, I have something for you,” he suddenly declared. Mikasa looked at him with curious eyes, but waited patiently as he fumbled in his pockets. Levi eventually dug out a golden pin and delicately put it in his sister’s hand.

“What is this?” she asked, curiously eyeing the jewel. She didn’t get to hold that much gold every day.

“A mocking jay. Petra gave it to me before she… left. She said it brings luck to the carrier. I want you to keep it for me.”

Mikasa stared at him for a few additional seconds, but didn’t protest and simply nodded, carefully closing her fingers on the pin. Levi smiled, and pulled his sister down again for another hug.

“I will miss seeing you growing up,” he whispered, echoing Petra’s words so long ago.

“You will always be with us,” his sister replied softly, her fingers clenching at his shirt’s back. The Peacekeeper then opened the door, and Mikasa left the room, her head turned back towards her brother. And Levi smiled at her and kept smiling until the door was closed again.

 

Not all of the kids managed to see him, but he made his best to say goodbye to as many as he could. Armin was trying hard not to burst out in tears; Bertholdt wasn’t even trying and ended awkwardly hugging Levi against his lanky frame, not able to correctly phrase his sentences. Levi had just softly patted his back, telling him that he was a great kid and that he was proud of him. It made the tall boy cry even more, and Levi had walked him to the door with an encouraging smile. Behind it, Reiner had picked him up with a few comforting words. The blond boy didn’t get in, but the look Levi and him exchanged was enough for them. He nodded wordlessly and slowly walked Bertholdt outside, a comforting hand guiding him in his back.

Eren had been next. Always so loyal to himself, he didn’t cry and just told Levi to “crush them all” and show everyone what District 12 was capable of. The older boy could still see that he was really shaken, but was swallowing his tears and showing him a strong face. It made Levi smile and he firmly put a hand on his shoulder, telling him solemnly that he was now charged with keeping the house safe, even if they both knew that the one really doing it was Mikasa. It still made the young boy nod with energy and promise that he would destroy all threats.

Sasha, Connie, Ymir, Christa, they all arrived in various states of distress, and Levi did his best to cheer them up with his sarcastic lame humour. For once, it made them laugh a bit.

Jean showed up last, and they didn’t talk much. The sandy-haired boy just stayed at the door and they looked at each other for a long moment, neither willing to break the silence. In the end, Levi just stood up and placed his hands on the already-taller boy’s shoulders, and pulled him in a hug. He heard Jean sniff sharply, but didn’t comment and just softly stroked his back when Jean let his head drop on his shoulder.

“I’m sorry your first Reaping was like that,” Levi said. Jean forced a hoarse laugh out.

“Good luck,” he replied. After a short while, he left the room before the Peacekeeper came to get him, not turning back once.

 

*

 

“Oh my, oh my, you two look… breath-taking!” the District 12 Escort enthusiastically commented, circling her two tributes like a cat checking on a couple of fat mice. Levi glanced at her and sighed silently. He had tried to remember her name, but it just refused to stick in his head. So she was just the Escort. He had the feeling that he wasn’t being fair, that the painted lady wasn’t really a bad person, but she was still trying to make them pretty for the sacrificial shrine, and it didn’t exactly make him want to make an effort.

He caught the other tribute shift nervously at his left, and he instinctively put a comforting hand on her shoulder. The girl startled, but gave him a hesitant grateful smile after a few seconds. Levi nodded and dropped his hand, but moved a bit closer to her. It wasn’t much, but it seemed to calm the young girl. 

“I think that it’s really brave, what you did,” Mina shyly offered after a moment. Levi turned his head towards her and met her big eyes, looking up at him with genuine admiration in them. He smiled a little, and the girl smiled back at him, more confident.

“Thanks.”

“I wish I could choose to die for a reason like that too.”

Levi didn’t reply. She wasn’t really expecting an answer anyway. He looked closer at her, studying the work their prep team had done. Her long dark hair had been braided in a very stylish crown around her head, and her make-up made her young features look much older than she really was.

“You look great,” he said. Mina blushed and mumbled a thank you, a soft smile on her lips.

“You look great too,” she replied after a short while, her eyes looking at him from head to toe. The inquisitive look strangely didn’t bother him. He guessed that she kind of reminded him of Christa, with her small frame and big eyes. But before the sweet face of the little blond girl could make his thoughts deviate to a dangerous place, Levi quickly brushed the comparison off. It wasn’t the time to have an overload of feelings.

But the boy still couldn’t help but feel sorry for Mina. She was only twelve, it was her first Reaping and she had had the bad luck card. He knew that she had cried a lot in the train, but now her eyes were dry and she was wearing her head high, not letting herself being crushed down.

Another brave soul sent to die.

 

“Ladies and gentlemen, it’s time to go now!” the Escort cheerfully announced, gesturing at them to follow her. The two kids looked at each other, and reported their attention back on the elevator door opening in front of them. Levi closed his eyes, and thought of what he was going to find upstairs. Chariots. Horses. Twenty-two other tributes.

Erwin.

He took a deep breath and stepped inside the shaft.

 

*

 

“You really don’t have your way with them, do you?” Erwin chuckled, watching Annie promptly escaping another vicious bite attempt from the horses.

“I’m not an animal person,” she replied, unfazed.

“I can see that. You should try giving them some sugar.”

“Why, so they can bite my arm off? No thanks, I’ll pass.” The short girl shot a dark glare to the mounts, making Erwin laugh.

“I’ll see if can start getting things out of the other Careers,” she then declared and slid away without a noise, walking straight to the 1 Chariot. Erwin followed her with his eyes for a moment, and then focused back on the two immaculate mounts, softly brushing the closest one’s head.

“Well, they are really taking this seriously, aren’t they,” he told the horse, who just snorted back. When their prep team had seen that this year’s two tributes were blue eyed blondes, they had jumped on the occasion to tug them in some sort of Heavenly version of the Peacekeepers’ uniforms. They even hung wings at the side of the chariot, and their stylist told them to look “as angelic as they could” with so much excitement that he was literally bouncing on his feet. Erwin had nodded numbly at the man, even if he really had no idea what that was supposed to mean.

“Oh dear, an angel, are you going to smite me with your heavenly sword?” a deep voice suddenly asked behind him, sarcasm barely hidden. Erwin froze, one hand stopped mid-air in the vicinity of the horse’s eye, and his heart jumped in his chest, starting a solo race with itself.

He had spent the whole afternoon thinking about what he would say when they would finally meet again, what he would do, what Levi would say and do, what others would think, what was the best move. He had come up with a few plausible scenarios, and had tried to refine them as much as he could while his prep team was making him spin endlessly without mercy to fix his costume on him.

Erwin slowly turned around, mouth already opening and selecting one line on his prepared sheet, his brain furiously turning high speed and ready to anticipate anything coming, he had thought and thought again about it for hours, he could do it, he could –

Whatever he was going to say died in his throat, and his brain short-circuited on the spot.

Levi was standing in front of him with a smug smile, arms crossed over his chest. He hadn’t grown much, Erwin noticed distantly. But, oh God, _wasn’t he gorgeous._ The short boy was wearing a coal-black leather suit, simply ornamented by a few crimson rubies. The tight fabric not only made his pale face stand out, but also enhanced the fine muscles all over his body, something Erwin hadn’t had the pleasure to enjoy seeing before. A dark and thin eyeliner had been applied around his eyes, simply but effectively making his grey pupils shine like a pair of diamonds. Erwin couldn’t help his eyes tracing his whole body, appreciating his strong but still delicate looking shoulders and arms, and went down and down and –

He remembered to breath.

“Well, my heavenly sword sure wouldn’t decline the offer,” he winked with a flirtatious smile. Levi’s grin faded and he looked at him in confusion, blinking a few times before the words’ meaning kicked in and he rolled his eyes with a dramatic exaggeration. Erwin still noticed the faint blush that had appeared under all the powder on his face, and his smile widened even more. He looked at Levi from head to toe again, and suddenly rushed forwards to grab his hand. To his dismay, it was covered by a thin black silken glove, but he could still feel the boy’s heat beneath it. Levi looked up at him and Erwin dove in his grey eyes just like he had so many times before; and suddenly everything seemed so easy. Erwin had spent hours overthinking himself, when really he didn’t have to do anything. Levi hadn’t changed, and he clearly wasn’t intending on playing a part for the sake of the Capitol. He was just being himself, he was just being Levi.

And it was already more than well enough.

Erwin lifted the short boy’s hand to his lips and gently dropped a kiss on his knuckles, eyes half-closed.

“I missed you,” he whispered against the glove.

“Idiot,” he heard Levi reply after a couple of seconds, and he looked at him, and Levi was smiling. Not the smug or sarcastic smile he was sometimes capable of. A true smile that made Erwin’s heart beat faster, and butterflies flutter in his stomach.

And the blond boy felt like that it was all he had ever needed.

A loud bell suddenly started to ring, and all of a sudden they were back in the Capitol, back in the course for their survival, back in the Hunger Games. Someone yelled at the tributes to take place in their chariots, and everyone started moving all at once. Erwin just then noticed that they had all stopped to look at them in silence, and he caught a few tributes shooting them dark looks, spiteful, disgusted. His heart dropped slightly, but then the look made bad memories of his time at the Peacekeeper Training School emerge, and he felt anger starting boiling in him. He kept his feelings from showing on his face though, but he could see that Levi had noticed it. The dark-haired boy shot him a worried look, but Erwin shook his head and let go of his hand, gesturing at him to go back to his chariot. He heard Annie step next to him, and he turned to look at her. Her eyes were unreadable as usual, but she was wearing a half-smile, and it somehow made Erwin feel better. She bumped him lightly in the shoulder and stalked past him to get in their chariot. “Let’s go.” Erwin nodded and turned his head back, but Levi had already left. He could see him swiftly climbing on his black chariot, taking place next to his fellow tribute at the end of the line.

“Hey, we’re going to miss the departure,” Annie called from above him. Erwin hummed back, and tore his eyes away from the small dark figure, focusing back on the matter in hand. He climbed next to Annie, and the Capitol exploded in cheers around them.

           

*

 

“Soooo, Erwin! We have heard a lot of things about you and Levi from District 12. Can you tell us more?”

“On what aspect exactly? Because I am not giving you the details,” Erwin chuckled with one if his most dashing smiles. The show host’s eyes widened in amused surprise, and he let out a long “oooooooooh” before laughing, soon followed by the entire audience.

 

In the back of the stage, Levi was looking straight in front of him and refused to meet Mina’s inquiring eyes. He thought of the three previous days; the day-long trainings where he, Erwin and Mina had essentially focused on survival skills, letting the Careers and the other tributes who wanted to show off claim their places on the combat stations. Annie sometimes joined them, but she mostly stayed with the other Careers. Levi had noticed that she was very good in close-hand combat, and hoped that he wouldn’t have to face her in the arena.

That was kind of a stupid thought, though. He would have to face all of the Careers at some point or another anyway, if he managed to survive the first stages of the Games. Which he hoped would be the case.

He also knew that hanging out with Mina wasn’t necessarily a good idea either. If they made an alliance, he was going to have to break it at some point, and he wasn’t sure he would have the heart to either kill her or send her away to die from someone else’s hand. Mina had told him that it was okay, that once things had settled down a bit she would go on her own way, and that him accepting to help her at all was already great. Her voice had hardly even shaken during her speech, and Levi had saluted her bravery.

“Why are you blushing?” he heard the girl ask next to him. If he didn’t know Mina better, he would have thought that she was teasing him. But the young girl was genuinely clueless, and it just made it even worse.

“It’s nothing,” he mumbled. Mina blinked a few times at him, but shrugged and fell back on her chair. Levi sighed silently.

The night after the Chariot Ride, he had found Erwin on the roof, clearly waiting for him. They had chatted for a long while, then fell into silence, and chatted a bit more, before they had heard footsteps in the stairs and Erwin had leaned forwards to kiss him goodnight before opening the door on a surprised Mina and slid back to his room. And it had felt really nice. The next day, Erwin had slipped something in Levi’s hand when they had left the training rooms, and the boy had opened his fingers on a magnetic card wearing the number 2 in big character in its middle. That night, he had sneaked into the second floor, and a lot of things had happened. A lot of good and pleasant things that still made him shiver deliciously when he thought about them. He knew that they were both facing serious problems if they were found out, but if it wasn’t totally worth it, he didn’t know what was.

A round of loud applause made him leave his pleasant recollection with a grunt, and the boy saw Erwin come back from the stage, a satisfied smile on his lips. He crossed Levi’s eyes and his smile widened, before one of his mentors arrived and pulled him away from the room. Levi followed him with his eyes until he disappeared and focused back on the matter in hand. He was probably going to be asked about what motivated him to volunteer. He truly didn’t really know what to reply. Giving away that he stole weapons and supplies from the Peacekeepers and that Erwin had helped him wasn’t really a good solution. So Erwin had come up with a half-lie for them both: officially, Levi had been on the verge of being unfairly punished for a crime he didn’t commit, and Erwin, being the great mayor son he was, had saved him. The younger boy had stared at him with a deadpanned look and asked sharply if he had read too many soapy novels, but Erwin just flashed a bright smile at him and assured him that the Capitol would love it, and that if they had to lie, they might as well make it useful, which was a very valid argument. Given the loud cheering that had followed the blonde off stage, he was apparently right. Levi just had to embroider around it, which shouldn’t be too complicated, but he was still stressed out his mind. A little more and he would start stamping on the floor and biting his nails. But then, his body gave him the memory of Erwin’s hands softly brushing against his skin, and a warm shiver went down his spine, washing some anxiety away in the process.

 

When he was called on stage, the waiting room empty around him, Levi was ready.

 

 


	8. Chapter Seven

 

The last note of Panem’s National Anthem died off, and the sky became pitch black again. The three kids stayed silent for a long moment.

“Eleven. Eleven tributes died today,” Erwin eventually whispered, his deep voice still echoing in the cave they had taken refuge in. Levi saw Mina tighten her grip on the thin blanket she had wrapped around her, pulling her legs closer to her chest and digging her nose in her arms, eyes absently staring at the floor. The night was getting cold, and they couldn’t make a fire in fear of attracting the other tributes. After a short while, Levi stood up and walked to the entrance of the cave.

“I’ll take the first watch, you two get some rest.”

The other two nodded at him, and soon the cave was completely silent again. Levi glanced outside for a moment, but couldn’t see anything suspect. The bare land in front of them was completely devoid of life, the moonlight giving the white stones the unnerving appearance of bones. Levi carefully looked up too, just in case. Accessing their cave by the uneven cliff side was highly dangerous and improbable, but you never knew. Some of these tributes were crazy enough to try.

Levi grabbed his backpack and carefully fumbled in it, bringing out a pair of warm cotton gloves he gratefully slipped his frozen hands in. Bless Mina for her velocity and good intuition. The boy then looked back in the cave, and watched for a few seconds the little girl huddled against the back wall, eyes closed and trying to find sleep. He could see that she was shivering, and a quick glance at Erwin hunched up in a foetal position a couple of meters away told him that the tall boy wasn’t doing much better.

“You should sleep against each other,” Levi suddenly suggested. “Keep each other warm. We always did it during winter.” He tried not to linger too long on the soft memories of a bunch of kids all cuddled up together, warming each other while excitedly laughing and babbling, their little fingers pointing at the snow lazily falling outside. His heart still ached in longing.

“I-is it okay?” Mina shyly asked, eyeing him and Erwin repeatedly. Levi rolled his eyes but couldn’t help his lips slightly curling up.

“Well, except if so generous former mayor son Erwin Smith wants to devote his whole self to my person?” he replied, giving the blond boy a look heavy of meaning. The latter one just smiled obnoxiously back, and Levi could see him physically keeping himself from teasing back. The blonde still winked at him before turning his eyes towards Mina and extending an arm, inviting her to come closer. After a brief hesitation, the girl shot a glance at Levi, but quickly stood up and settled against Erwin when the dark-haired boy nodded encouragingly at her.

“Thank you,” he heard her offering quietly, some colours already coming back to her cheeks. “I’ll take the next watch if you want,” she added quickly, her eyes going back and forth between him and Erwin again. The blond boy laughed.

“Well, that would be very nice of you, Mina, thank you.” Erwin smiled at her, bringing a happy grin on the young girl’s lips in response, and Levi turned his head away, hiding a soft smile. Mina had gone way beyond Levi’s expectations, and he couldn’t help but feel glad that she was here. Some part of him hissed that it was just selfish of him, that he was just using her to remind him of home, and that it would backfire sooner or later, when she would have to leave. But even if he knew that it was partly true, he didn’t want to think about it just now. For the moment, they had all survived the bloodbath, were in a relatively safe place, and in possession of two backpacks, two knives, a bow and several arrows. Which was more than they could have hoped for.

They had almost all lost their lives back at the Cornucopia though.

Levi and Mina didn’t have a true mentor, District 12’s only previous Victor having killed himself shortly after the end of the Games. It had caused a lot of noise back then, but Levi wasn’t even born when it had happened. As long as he remembered, District 12’s Victor Village had always been a ghost town. Their Escort tried to do the best she could, describing the previous Games and how the different Victors had won, but she didn’t have a clue over the best survival strategy. The Capitol’s eyes were more looking for the spectacular things, the bloodbaths, the killings; not how to pass a night in a hostile environment. Erwin’s mentors weren’t of great help either, since they only knew the Career basic strategy, a strategy that they were clearly not going to follow. What they still got out of it was that they would need equipment and weapons. They could always run away and play low-profile, but they knew that with their growing popularity and Levi’s eleven after his individual test, they had attracted all attention on them. They would be tracked down. Hunted. And they needed to be able to defend themselves. Which meant that they would have to dive in the bloodbath.

They came up with a very bold strategy. Mina was the fastest among them three, and also the one who offered the smallest target. As soon as the cannonball was shot, the girl jumped from her pedestal and rushed straight in front of her, not caring about what was happening around her; or rather, trying to block out the screams and horrible sound of bones cracking and bodies falling behind the mad beating of her heart, resonating like war drums in her ears. She saw another tribute she distantly recognized as the female Career from 1 approaching the Cornucopia from the other side at high speed, and Mina suddenly felt another wave of panicked adrenaline rush through her veins, making her feet run even faster; and for a very short second she thought with a mix of dread and fascination that she was literally going to take off and start flying. And then she was at the entrance of the Cornucopia, and she grabbed the first backpacks she saw, barely slowing down, and tripped on a bow she had accidentally knocked over in her rush. The accidental movement saved her life, and Mina just had the time to hear a knife hiss over her head before she sprinted away, the bow and quiver in one hand, the two bags covering her back and head, not looking back once. She registered Levi and Erwin nearby, engaging the other tributes before they could target her. They saw her and quickly ran away too, but in different directions. It sent the Careers who had already grabbed a few weapons in a very brief confusion, not able to decide which one of the three to target. It had been enough for them to escape though, and the Careers had closer matters at hand for the moment anyway.

The three of them met again shortly after near a small pond, all breathless. Levi had a few scratches, Erwin’s nose and lips were bleeding along some nasty scratches on his cheek, and they knew that bruises were also going to appear soon, but they were alive and whole and it was already good enough for them. They had unpacked the bags and found a blanket, some rope, a scarf and gloves, water, several biscuits and a knife in each of them. After a few minutes of rest, they had started moving away from the bloodbath, looking for a safe place to pass the night.

Eleven tributes died in the bloodbath, or in the manhunt that had followed. It was almost half of them. It was a lot.

But it was also not enough.

There were still twelve deaths to go before one of them would be able to leave the arena. Before _Erwin_ would be able to leave the arena. Levi looked at the two figures huddled together in the cave, eyes closed and breathing steadily. Mina’s small body looked so tiny against Edwin’s broad shoulders, and Levi’s heart sank. Twelve deaths, including his own, and Mina’s. Erwin and he hadn’t discussed his decision at all, and Levi was grateful for that. He knew that if they did, they would probably end up being angry with each other, and he didn’t want them to argue. They only had so little time together, he didn’t want it to be spoiled by useless fights. Levi looked fondly at the blond boy’s face, his sharp features lit by the moonlight, making him look like a mystical creature coming from another world. He still remembered when those bones offered some roundness on them, and a small smile appeared on his lips.

And then he heard the distant but too close echo of stones rolling down, and he snapped up, an arrow already notched on his bow. His heart was racing in his chest, fear and wondering flowing in his veins. They shouldn’t be able to see him from his position, how did they find out where they were? Where did they make a mistake, where did they –

The boy almost shot the parachute that had landed a few meters away from the opening of the cave. He stared at it dumbly for a few seconds, his brain slowly processing what happened. And almost laughed out loud at his stupid panic. But he didn’t. And it saved his life.

A spear flew towards Levi’s head, and he ducked down, barely avoiding the projectile, then quickly stood back up and shot in the direction the spear had come from, catching a movement and the flash of a metallic zipper in the big stones ahead of him. He heard a whimper and the sound of a body falling down, and shortly after, the cannon rang out. The silence that followed was deafening, only perturbed by Levi’s own racing heart. He stayed completely still, his head barely moving to scan the neighbourhood, every sense in a high level of alert and ready to react in a blink if needed. He heard Erwin and Mina slowly getting up behind him, ready to fight if it came to it.

After a few minutes, it became clear that whoever attacked them was a solitary. But if one had found them, others could follow. They had managed the first day, but it was only the beginning. They hadn’t planned on tracking the others down, knowing that when time came they would come to them.

But maybe had it started sooner than they had expected.

“We should go,” Levi stated, eyes still looking for any movement out there. Mina and Erwin appeared next to him, and he saw the girl frowning from a corner of his eyes.

“Wait, what is inside the parachute?” she asked. Levi looked at the abandoned object a few meters away, and frowned.

“It doesn’t look like one a sponsor would send,” he said.

“But if it doesn’t come from them, why is it beeping?”

Levi only had time to hear Erwin gasp before he felt a strong arm grabbing his coat and pulling him backwards. And as he was falling, a loud explosion resonated in the night and the sky got illuminated in red and orange, stones and sand flying everywhere. Levi shrieked in pain and covered his ears, unable to move for a few seconds. And then silence came back, and he slowly pushed his hands away from his head. It was completely muffled, but he could still hear his fingers snapping next to his ears. He let out a small sigh of relief.

And then sat up suddenly, the movement making his head spin violently and his eyes see red. But his little problems immediately looked ridiculous when he saw what was around him: Mina was slightly moving a few centimetres from him, trying to right herself with a few pained groans; but in front of him, Erwin was lying at the opening of the cave, completely still. In the dim moonlight, Levi could see blood flowing down his head, and he spotted a rock covered with red not far from him.

“Oh no no no no, Erwin,” he mumbled, fumbling to his feet and rushing to the blond boy, carefully putting a hand on his neck, checking for his pulse. He almost cried of relief when he felt his heart beating under his fingers, but the feeling quickly vanished when Levi saw the extent of the damage on Erwin’s head. If he didn’t do anything soon, he would die from loss of blood. But if he did take care of his wound right now, it would give the other tributes the time to find them and finish them off.

Levi slowly looked back at Mina, who had just managed to sit up, and was now approaching on her four with wobbly movements.

“If you want to go, it’s now,” he told her in a hoarse voice. “The other tributes won’t take long to find us.”

The girl blinked at him in confusion, but understanding started appearing on her face when she saw Erwin’s motionless body.

“That soon?” she eventually replied after a moment, a broken laugh escaping her lips. “No way, you won’t get rid of me that easily.” She let a short silence pass before she lowered her eyes, seemingly taking a closer look at Erwin’s wound. “I’m going to die anyway right? I might as well do something good before it happens,” the girl softly added, barely more than a whisper. And before she could realize what was happening, Levi had wrapped his arms around her and pulled her in a hug. The boy himself wasn’t even sure why he had done this, he just felt like that they both needed it right now. He was scared, scared to lead Mina to her death faster than it should have been. But he was also scared that he wouldn’t be able to save Erwin on his own, and he was so relieved that Mina was here too, and he hated that part of him, that part that was afraid of being on his own, of not having someone to watch his back. The young girl just silently hugged him back, and they stayed like this for a short while, before the urgency of the situation kicked in again and Levi pulled away, chastening himself for wasting those precious seconds, but not entirely feeling guilty either. Many people who barely knew him believed that he wasn’t capable of feelings, that he was so broken that his soul had left his body a long time ago; but it was wrong. Levi had always felt things with just as much intensity as anyone else, probably even more than a lot of people. He just had more control over them, but that control also had its limits, and he was dangerously close to one.

The boy took a deep breath, and glanced outside before focusing back on Erwin. He couldn’t see anyone yet, but the smoke of the explosion hadn’t completely cleared away either, and after the previous fiasco he didn’t completely trust his judgement anymore.

It didn’t really matter anyway.

Regardless of how long their hunters would take to get to them, he would have to be faster than them.

 

*

 

They managed. It was a true miracle, but they managed. Another parachute landed shortly after, this time really coming from their sponsors. After having carefully checked it and retrieved its content, Levi remembered to send a vague thank you to the myriad of invisible cameras probably flying all around them. Some part of him wondered distantly if people were placing bets over whether they would be able to save Erwin and themselves, but the boy quickly brushed the thought away with a disgusted frown. What happened outside the arena wasn’t his concern anymore. They would never be again anyway, if he could carry out the mission he had assigned to himself only a few days ago; a few days that already felt like a lifetime. Levi angrily shook his head and focused back on the matter in hand. If he didn’t hurry, that so-called mission would meet an early abortion; and he would be damned if he let that happen.

The parachute contained a weird ointment neither Levi nor Mina had ever seen, but they applied some generously on Erwin’s scalp, and the bleeding stopped a few very stressful minutes later. Then they each wrapped one of the blond boy’s arms around their shoulders, and started dragging him along, carefully leaving their shelter at a frustratingly slow speed, and finally settling down on the rocks under a small wall of stone, hiding them from sight. It was far from being ideal, but they didn’t really have the will to move further anyway. The adrenaline induced strength they had felt earlier was wearing off, and Levi could feel exhaustion starting to point out its vicious nose. They carefully laid Erwin on the floor, rolling a blanket under his head as a fortune pillow, and Levi heavily fell down next to him. Mina quietly sat down on the other side of the unconscious boy.

“Thanks,” Levi offered after a while. Mina just smiled at him and nodded.

“What now?” she asked.

Levi glanced at Erwin’s motionless form, and felt the urge to check again that he was still alive. He sighed when he felt the blond boy’s hot breath tickle on his finger.

“Now we wait. And we try to stay alive. Easy right,” he replied with broken humour, as if it was something very mundane. Mina raised an eyebrow, but didn’t comment.

“I’ll take the watch, you should rest a bit,” she proposed after a moment.

Levi looked at her, and noticed the clear signs of exhaustion on her face and body language. But he didn’t protest, and just smiled slightly, silently thanking her. The girl smiled back, and gestured at him to go to sleep. Levi had stopped wondering whether he could trust her or not a long time ago. He just knew that Mina wouldn’t betray them.

After a short while, he slumped down and softly rested his head on Erwin’s chest, right above his heart. The steady beating relaxed him, and the boy soon slipped in a light dreamless sleep.

 

*

 

When Erwin woke up the next morning, he had the good surprise to be welcomed back among the living by Levi’s lips. They were gone too soon though, and Erwin grunted, asking for another kiss. Levi just lightly bumped his chest and told him to get his lazy ass up, making the blond boy groan even more, but his complaints didn’t lead to anywhere. With a resigned sigh, Erwin eventually cracked his eyes open, and was surprised to find a blue sky above him. Why were they outside? Weren’t they in his bed just before? He kind of had the memory of feeling Levi sleeping against him, but it didn’t seem quite right. Now that he thought about it, the young man could feel a distant part of his brain nudging at his consciousness, making him frown and close his eyes, a wave of dizziness suddenly washing through him. Did someone bump his head in a wall? Because it sure like hell felt like someone did, and quite violently to be honest, and –  

Erwin suddenly opened his eyes wide with a gasp, and caught Levi looking down at him with a worried frown. He wasn’t in his bed in 12, or in 2, or even in his obnoxiously luxurious room in the Training Centre.

He was in the arena.

And Erwin felt sick all over again, and had to close his eyes to stop the world from spinning around him.

“A bomb,” Erwin suddenly mumbled, memories of the previous night rushing back to him. His tongue felt thick and sticky in his mouth, and he started coughing dryly. Somewhere next to him, Levi quickly fumbled in their bags and shortly after, the cold opening of a flask was pressed against Erwin’s lips. The shorter boy slipped a hand behind his back to carefully but firmly help him sit up.

“Oh, you’re awake!” Mina called, startling Erwin, and the young girl soon appeared in his vision field, relief apparent on her face. “You lost so much blood yesterday, you worried us sick,” she added with a light laugh, clearly in an attempt to relax the atmosphere; and it strangely did, even making Erwin chuckle back a bit at the sound of her fresh and clear voice. And then the young man registered what she had just said, and his laugh died a little in his throat.

“What happened?” he asked. Levi and Mina looked at each other for a moment, and eventually the dark-haired boy sighed and started catching him up on the events of the previous evening. When he was done, Erwin stayed silent a long moment, a heavy weight settling in his stomach. He had almost died. And he had left them to deal with a dire situation alone.

“You saved me,” he blurted out, realizing that it was pretty obvious right after the words left his mouth.

“You saved us too,” Mina replied with a smile. Erwin couldn’t help but grin back. He had grown quite fond of the young girl.

Which didn’t make anything easier.

 

Once they had filled their flasks with fresh water from a nearby pond, the three kids decided to move along the stone beach, and ended in front of a forest, with no other way to go. Levi had suggested going back, but they were afraid that the other tributes were tracking them and had found some traces indicating their passage. So they decided to try their chance under the trees. Mina walked ahead of the group, cutting the branches in their way with a few precise swings of her knife. Behind her, the boys followed her slowly, Erwin’s head still a little dizzy and leaning on Levi to help him walk. Erwin could feel how tense the shorter boy’s body was against him, and he saw his pale eyes scanning their surroundings like a hawk, his head sometimes snapping towards the source of a sudden noise. But every time it was just a rabbit or a squirrel going by, living their merry lives, and the place seemed completely devoid of human beings besides them. After a couple of hours of aimless wandering, the three kids decided to make a short halt on the verges of the stream they were following, and Erwin generously threw some fresh water on his face, instantly feeling better. Mina decided to scout a little further from them, declaring that she would take a look at the section of the forest they were going to enter.

It happened so quickly it didn’t even feel real.

Erwin heard a sharp gasp when Mina tripped, immediately followed by a strident metallic hiss. And then the gut-wrenching sound of broken bones and flesh torn apart. And silence. After a horrible second, Erwin watched with horrified eyes Mina’s body slump forward, two spears piercing her completely from front to back. And as the last leaves that had flied up when the girl had fallen slowly fluttered back to the ground, everything seemed to come to a stop. Erwin was barely blinking, his heart beating loudly in his ears, the eerie silence making his hair stand on his skin. He distantly noticed that his hands were still frozen a few centimetres away from his face, drops of water quietly sliding down his skin and falling on his trousers, making little darker spots on the grey fabric.

“Someone’s here!” a loud voice suddenly shouted in the distance, almost covered by the cannonball being shot in the speakers; and before he could register what his body was doing, Erwin had grabbed Levi and started to run away, the shorter boy’s wide eyes still fixed on Mina’s body, clearly in a state of shock. The sudden movement still shook him back and Levi quickly regained control after a few seconds, snapping his arm out of Erwin’s grip and sprinting forward; and they ran, as fast as they could, not daring to turn back to see if they had lost their pursuers.

When it became clear that they had somehow got away, the two boys stopped all at once, and didn’t speak for a long time. They decided to climb in the trees for the night, and settled on two neighbouring branches before strapping themselves to the trunk. After several long minutes of silence, Erwin slowly extended his arm and wrapped his fingers around Levi’s, softly tracing circles on the back of his hand with his thumb, still detecting a hint of human heat through their thick gloves; and the two boys looked at each other, not saying a word. After a moment, the Anthem exploded all around them, filling the air with its melody and promises of death. And when Mina’s face finally appeared in the sky, her eyes looking straight with calm determination somewhere above them, somewhere at places far away beyond the clouds, the boys silently nodded at her pale projection, paying her a last tribute.

“She was afraid to die slowly,” Levi whispered, a few minutes after the sky had gone dark again. “At least she didn’t feel any pain.”

Erwin slowly nodded, and they fell in a comfortable silence again. He softly squeezed his fingers around Levi’s.

“She was only twelve,” he heard the younger boy say again in a quiet voice, and Erwin knew that he was thinking about his little siblings. He let his hand drop and cupped the boy’s cheek instead, stroking his pale skin with his thumb. Levi leaned in his touch, and they stayed like this for a long moment.

“I love you,” Erwin whispered, and Levi’s lips slightly twitched upwards.

“I love you too,” he murmured back, and they looked at each other, smiling and mourning and whispering to each other in the middle of a carnage.

Just two young boys in love in a pitiless world.

 

           

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry I killed Mina all over again *sobs*


	9. Chapter Eight

 

Erwin felt his neck getting sore at looking up for too long, but he couldn’t tear his gaze away from Levi’s small figure climbing with ease and grace at the tree’s fragile branches, leaping upwards and defying every law of physics that should have forbidden him from getting so high.

“Can you see anything?” the blond boy called, placing his hands at each side of his mouth to carry his voice out better. He saw Levi jump and land lightly on a branch, slowly standing up and looking around. The dark-haired boy then looked down and shook his head, and Erwin sighed heavily, lowering his eyes and massaging the stiff muscles on his neck with a groan. They had entered a very deep section of the forest where the sunlight was barely letting them distinguish each other from a nearby tree, and they had been wandering in it for hours and hours now.

Long story short, they were lost.

Erwin suddenly heard branches and leaves rustling loudly above him, and he shot his head up again, only to notice that Levi had leaped on a neighbouring higher tree, and was already climbing up again. Erwin opened his mouth to shout a warning, but he realized that it was kind of pointless anyway and closed his mouth with a displeased snap. The genuine fascination he felt while following Levi leaping up and up didn’t really cover the worry he could feel nagging at his throat. He was getting too high.

_He’s getting too close to the sky. The sun will burn his wings and he will fall._

Erwin startled at the sudden thought and frowned. _His wings will burn,_ a voice repeated in his mind, and the blond boy shook his head, trying to get that strange thing out.

“And the angel will lose his Grace,” the wind then sung next to his ear out of nowhere, and Erwin snapped his head in its direction, but there wasn’t anything.

There never was anything.

“Leave me alone,” the boy growled, furiously brushing the air with his hands. He knew he shouldn’t have tried those berries, but they had kind of looked like the ones he often ate back in 12, and he had made the mistake to give in the nostalgia. And since then these voices had been following him, seemingly digging out his worst fears and sneaking them into his consciousness with poisonous and melodious whispers, and the eerie darkness surrounding him wasn’t helping at all.

“It’s the last time I let you lead the way,” Levi’s voice tore through the silence above him, and Erwin lifted his head to look at the shorter boy. Levi was now carefully going down, and his pale face just reappeared below the massive barrier of dark leaves that kept most of the light out, giving him the appearance of a ghost. “At this point any direction would be okay, actually. We’re like in the middle of the forest.” At the news, Erwin felt his heart sink and he passed a tired hand on his face. He had thought that entering that part of the woods was going to hide them and offer them a safe place, but now he wanted nothing else than getting the hell out of it, even if they had to slash through a group of Careers in the process.

Anything but that horrible, oppressing silence.

Erwin suddenly heard a hiss above his head and a sharp gasp.

_See, see, look at him…_

He lifted his eyes and froze. Levi was standing on a branch, a hand clenched on his chest where an arrow had pierced through his heart.

_Look at the angel falling_

His body slowly tilted back, and Erwin rushed forwards with a scream.

A scream that never left his throat, his body unable to move.

_Look at the beauty dying_

The blond boy could only lift his arm and extend it in a vague attempt to catch Levi, and his whole body froze with horror.

He was holding a bow.

_Look at the child you have killed…_

_“Erwin!”_

 

Erwin shot his eyes open, gasping for air and furiously bracing the air in front of him with uncoordinated movements. His hands came in collision with something solid and he instantly clung on it like a drowning man, closing his fists around a pair of arms at each side of him.

“Erwin, breathe,” a deep voice instructed him, and was it Levi’s? He wasn’t sure, it couldn’t be, Levi was dead, Erwin had killed him, he had seen his body falling from that tree and the boy’s grey eyes shining in the dark, hollow and fixed on him; his pale pupils piercing through him like that arrow, burning with so much cold, and Erwin was cold, so cold…

 “Erwin!” the voice called again but with more force, and the blond boy felt two hands covered with woollen gloves grabbing his face and carefully tilting it up. “You with me?”

Erwin blinked a few times at the face in front of him, the morbid images still covering his eyes like a macabre veil. After several painfully long seconds, his brain finally started fighting the last threads of the nightmare, and the young man felt the pounding of his heart slowly calming down with each breath.

“Levi”, he croaked out, his voice sounding weird and distant at his own ears.

“Yeah, that’s my name. Glad to see you haven’t completely lost your wits yet.”

“You’re alive,” Erwin continued, ignoring the interruption. And all of a sudden he felt so tired, and his head dropped forward, landing on Levi’s shoulder with a small thud. “You’re alive,” he repeated in a breath. “You were climbing on a tree and you fell, and I couldn’t catch you, and –” His eyes then widened, remembering where they were. He could feel the rope strapping him to the tree they had got on for the night, but Levi was sitting on his lap, his legs freely hanging in the void at each side of the large branch.

With nothing to keep him from plummeting to his death if he lost balance.

Erwin let go of his previous grip and swiftly slipped his arms in Levi’s back, pulling the boy close in a tight embrace without a word.

“It was just a dream,” Levi whispered after a moment, his deep voice somehow soothing the panic Erwin had started feeling again. He could feel the shorter boy’s heart beating strongly and steadily in his chest, and Erwin closed his eyes, letting the rhythm penetrate him and feeling his own heart starting to reproduce the same pace. Levi was right. It was just a dream. Nothing real. Levi wouldn’t lose his balance that easily.

 _But that’s not quite how it happened, did it?_ a cruel voice whispered in Erwin’s head, and he felt cold sweat forming in his back. _You can’t hide from reality. Stop running._

“I killed you,” he heard someone say, and then realized that it was his own voice. He felt Levi freeze in his arms. “You didn’t lose balance. I shot you. I killed you,” Erwin still carried on, the words escaping his mouth in a shaking and broken flow without him being able to stop them. After a second, Levi pulled away and firmly cupped the blonde’s face, turning it toward him and digging his grey eyes in Erwin’s.

“It was just a dream,” he repeated, his voice conveying so much conviction that Erwin believed him for a moment. Just a dream. Just a nightmare.

But he knew that it wasn’t quite true either.

“I can’t,” Erwin breathed out after a few seconds, doubt and fear starting swirling in angry waves inside of him again. He lowered his eyes and stared at somewhere at his right, at the vast dark forest stretching around them. “I can’t do this.”

“Yes you can. And you will.” Levi’s reply immediately came, the words almost sounding like an order. “You will get your fat ass out of this living hell and hug your mom and dad. They are waiting for you, fuckhead.” Erwin flinched at the mention of his parents, and his mouth was already opening to say something; but before he could get anything out, Levi leaned forward and softly placed his forehead against his, his hot breath filling the air between them.

“I trust you, Erwin. Don’t fail me.”

And whatever protest Erwin was going to formulate died in his throat. _Trust_. The word came into resonance with something inside of him, and after a short second, the boy took a deep breath and forced himself to calm down. He was Erwin freaking Smith, for God’s sake. He had more control than that.

“Tell me a story,” he suddenly asked in a whisper, clinging at the first thought that he felt would lead him away from the dark monsters still lingering in me. He moved his head backward to catch Levi’s eyes, and the shorter boy frowned a little, studying his features with a hint of confusion.

“What kind of story?” Levi eventually asked, an eyebrow still slightly raised.

“I don’t know. Anything you want.”

Erwin saw the other boy frowning again, pondering, and took advantage of the moment to grab the rope Levi had used earlier that was still loosely hanging around a neighbouring branch, and pulled the shorter boy closer. Levi followed the movement, understanding what Erwin wanted to do, and soon his back was pressed against the taller boy’s chest, one leg hanging in the void and the other crooked up between Erwin’s knees, the rope circling his belly and tying him to both the tree and Erwin.

“Have I told you about that time where Old Granny spanked Ymir because she caught her playing tricks at her grandsons?” Erwin just hummed in response, inviting him to carry on. And through the night, Levi told him about how much the kids had grown, how Bertholdt was already probably taller than Erwin himself was, how Armin had kept all the books he had given him and regularly took them out to read them again. And Erwin listened to him without a word, chuckling when he related something funny, almost hearing the kids’ laughs and unstopping babbling.

And his heart ached, ached so much, thinking of how he had stolen one of their main reasons to smile, the reason why they were still alive to begin with. And he grabbed Levi’s face in his hands and kissed him, kissed his lips, his cheeks, his neck, and whispered that he loved him again and again against his skin, scared that soon he wouldn’t be able to say it anymore; scared that he wouldn’t have said it enough when it was too late.

 

*

 

It had been three days since Mina’s death. They were only ten left, and their number was going down every night. Erwin and Levi had decided to stay in the forest, but didn’t move by a mutual silent agreement any closer to the spot where Mina had fallen. By day, they would move a bit, following the stream but at a safe distance from it, hunting small prey but carefully avoiding the bright-coloured berries on the bushes. They almost ran into a group of Careers at one point, but the tributes seemed to be already tracking someone else and didn’t hear them. Erwin felt sorry for the poor kid, but she or he had probably just saved their lives. By night, they would climb in a tree and sleep there until the sun woke them up, and another day of hiding and careful moving would start again.

 

On the fifth day, they found Annie slumped against a tree, trying to stay straight and pressing a hand over her stomach. Erwin started moving towards her as soon as he saw her, but Levi stopped him and looked around, trying to see if there were other tributes nearby, waiting in the trees, or if there was another one of the almost invisible traps one of the Careers was capable of. Once he had judged that it was safe, he let Erwin go and the blond boy emerged from the bushes, walking towards his fellow tribute. He heard Levi quietly notching an arrow behind him, ready to intervene if anything happened. Erwin smiled for himself, always feeling more reassured by the short boy’s invisible presence. He knelt in front of Annie, taking a close look at her features. He hadn’t seen her since the Cornucopia, and just assumed that she was sticking with the other Careers. Her face was horribly pale, but she still managed to twitch her lips upwards in a sarcastic smile when he got down, and even chuckled a little.

“Well, glad to see you’re still alive, Smith.”

“What happened to you?” Erwin replied, lifting her hand to take a look at her wound. He almost regretted it immediately: black blood was sipping out of the injury, mixing with pus in a horrible half-liquid thing. His thoughts must have been pretty apparent on his face, because Annie gave out a broken laugh, coughing out blood in the process.

“Remember how the mentors told us that the crucial part was to know when to betray your allies before they betray you? Well, I fucked up,” she simply stated in her usual casual tone, as if it wasn’t big deal, but Erwin could still hear her voice shaking slightly. “That’s some very nasty poison they put on that knife. Not sure how long it’s going to take to kill me, though.”

And then she locked eyes with him, her icy blue pupils filled with pain, giving out a silent plead. After a short moment, Erwin clenched his fist, feeling anger starting boiling in his veins. He had never been very close with Annie, but the girl had clearly shown herself as an ally if not a friend, and had provided him with silent support every time their mentors had confronted him about Levi. And now the other Careers had left her to slowly die in horrible pain behind, not even respecting her enough to give her a decent death.     

“Make it quick,” she whispered, a hint of revived fire in her hoarse voice. Erwin took a deep breath and nodded, placing a firm hand on her shoulder. But before he could do anything else, the blond girl suddenly surged forward and whispered a few words in his ear. Erwin’s eyes widened, and he opened his mouth to ask something, but Annie had already slumped back against the tree. They locked eyes for a moment, and the short girl smiled lightly, closing her eyes. Erwin looked at her curiously, but he knew that the conversation was over. He took another breath.

“I will remember you, Annie Leonhart,” the young man declared; and in a fluid movement, he took his knife out and dug it deeply in her chest, right through her heart. Annie’s head fell forwards, and a cannonball was shot. Erwin slowly pulled the knife out, and stayed knelt in front of his fellow tribute for a few more seconds, before gently wrapping his arms around her and lifting her in his arms. He turned around and walked a few meters, right under an opening in the high branches of the trees, where the morning sun was sending its rays in an almost magical way. He slowly knelt down again, and laid Annie’s body there, softy lit by the golden light of the sun. She almost looked peaceful, like a marble queen just taking a rest.

Erwin heard a hovercraft approaching, and he turned away, jogging back to where Levi was still hidden. They watched the metallic arm go down, lifting Annie’s small body out into the sky, and out of sight.

“You did a good thing,” Levi offered quietly after a moment. Erwin nodded absently, his eyes still looking up at where Annie’s body had disappeared. And then Levi took his hand, bringing him back to reality, and they ran away swiftly, aware that the Careers would guess that someone had put an end to Annie’s agony and come back to check.

 

They were only seven left. Them, the remaining four Careers, and the female tribute from 10 they had seen with two other Careers two days before.

And they knew that as long as they were alive, the other five wouldn’t rest until they had hunted them down and killed them.

The clock was ticking away.

 

*

 

After they left the clearance where Annie died, Levi and he decided to get closer to the border of the forest, where the trees were more spaced out and allowed better view over who was approaching, but were still partially hiding them. When twilight came, they happened to be at a very good spot to enjoy the landscape, and they just decided to allow themselves a few minutes of calm and admired the sunset. The edge of the forest let way to a golden beach, slowly disappearing under the lazy waves a few meters away. Erwin couldn’t help but joke at how the view would have been such a wonderful romantic scenery if they hadn’t been running for their lives. Levi rolled his eyes, but didn’t protest when Erwin leaned forwards to kiss him, their fingers entwining softly.

And then Levi violently pushed him sideways, falling himself on the ground next to the blond boy. He quickly stood up again, and Erwin only had the time to see him shooting an arrow at the tribute from 10 who had just appeared before the massive male Career from 1 jumped on him and almost made a hole in his head with his blade. Erwin quickly rolled sideways and managed to make the other tribute drop his weapon before he was pinned on the floor by the boy’s giant body, who took out a knife from his belt and lifted it to slit his throat. He never managed it though, as his own blade suddenly pierced through his chest, and the Career looked down with great surprise at it before falling next to Erwin with a loud thud. The blond boy let out the breath he was holding in a sharp gasp, and looked up to thank Levi.

And froze.

“Watch out!” he yelled, before grabbing the bow Levi had dropped not far from him and notching the arrow he had hung at his belt.

Too late.

Levi barely let out a gasp when the female tribute from 1 put a knife against his throat, and stayed perfectly still, his eyes wide and staring at Erwin. The blond boy didn’t lower his bow, and the Career didn’t move either. He could clearly see madness in her eyes, a murderous insanity that sent a cold shiver in his spine.

“You do realize that whatever you do, you are going to die, right?” Erwin called out, with far more calm than he really felt. The other tribute smiled like a shark, and burst out in a hysterical laughter.

“Oh yes I know, I know!” she replied with a sick snicker. “But I don’t think I will be dying alone.” Her lips extended in a crazy grin, and she took out a small box from her pocket.

A small box with a red button on it.

Annie’s last words suddenly came back to Erwin’s mind.

_They have bombs._

Erwin’s eyes widened, and suddenly everything happened too quickly. He didn’t know how Levi had found out too, but the short boy grabbed the arm of the Career with inhumane speed and strenght, making her drop the box with a surprised shriek. And move her other arm almost in reflex.

Erwin watched with horror as a red line appeared on Levi’s pale throat, blood spattering on his coat and on the floor. And as his small body collapsed forward, Erwin’s muscles automatically took the lead and he shot, the arrow finding its way right through the Career’s opened mouth. Her eyes widened in surprise, a mirror of her fellow tribute’s face, and she slumped down in a mess of limbs.

A heavy silence fell on the beach, only broken shortly after by the macabre sound of the cannon shooting its content of misery.

One. Two. Three times.

Four times.

Erwin dropped his bow and rushed to where Levi had fallen, heart pounding madly and refusing what the cannon had already told him.

“Oh no, come on, come on,” he stammered, falling down on his knees in the wet sand, that red sand already sucking in Levi’s blood, flowing furiously from the gap in his throat.

His grey eyes were wide opened, staring blindly at the crimson sky.

“No no no no no.”

Erwin didn’t even recognize his own voice, the broken voice that had come out his chest, the chest containing that heart that sent waves of pain at each beat, and he just wanted to scream and rip it out of its prison of flesh because _it just hurt too much_ , and no it wasn’t fair, Levi wasn’t supposed to go like that, drowned in his own blood, he was supposed to – to –

_Don’t let it be wasted._

Erwin froze, and was suddenly aware of his high level of exposure, out on the beach. He forced himself to take a deep breath and closed his eyes, gathering all his will to push the raging emotions at bay, creating a fragile bubble around him. It wasn’t time to let them out, not yet. There were still two Careers out there, and he was alone.

Alone.

He opened his eyes and they fell on Levi’s lifeless body, on his pale face seemingly already turning into a greyish cadaveric colour. Erwin felt his heart throb painfully, his little bubble threatening to blow out and release everything again.

_No, not now._

He breathed deeply, trying to calm himself and reactivate his cognitive functions. Levi was gone, and he wasn’t going to dishonour him by getting caught like a stupid rabbit in a hunter trap.

Erwin carefully looked around him, and didn’t see any immediate danger. He figured that the three tributes must have been waiting for them, hidden nearby, and weren’t working with the remaining two. Whose whereabouts he had no idea of, and they could be ten seconds away from getting to him as well as hiking somewhere at the other side of the arena. Anyway, even if they couldn’t know he was still alive, they knew that someone had escaped the bloodbath and were going to track the survivor down. He had to move quickly.

He looked at Levi one last time, and softly placed a hand on his face, closing his eyes. His skin was already cold.

_I wonder if I’ll ever be able to repay my debt, to you and your family._

Levi had been so wrong. He didn’t owe Erwin anything, he never had. Erwin was the one who owed him everything. He owed him courage, and the will to keep his head high when everything seemed to go against him. He remembered the fire burning inside the short boy, that fire that fascinated him, that fire he had seen in his eyes the first time they had met. It was why Erwin had helped him in the first place, why he had helped him again later.

Why he had fallen in love with him.

“I won’t fail you,” he promised, and leaned forward to drop a last kiss on the boy’s forehead.

After a few more seconds, Erwin turned his eyes away, feeling that lingering too long here would only make it worse. He stood up, his brain slowly setting on thinking again, and he considered his choices. He had run out of arrows, and wasn’t exactly willing to pull out the one stuck through the Career’s mouth, nor did he want to look for the 10 tribute’s body.

He had a better plan anyway.

Erwin carefully circled around Levi’s body, and picked up the little box that the tribute from 1 had dropped. Bombs. He remembered the one that had exploded the first night in front of their cave, effectively knocking him out and almost killing him. He didn’t know what the organizers were thinking, arming them with these things, but he wasn’t going to question their decision now.

Erwin was standing on a minefield.

And he had the thing to trigger it in his hand.

 

Somewhere far far away from the arena, a group of young teenagers silently joined hands, heads high, biting their lips to keep the tears inside. And then one of them slowly lifted his right hand, thumb over pinkie, the three other fingers standing straight and strong. And soon, all his adopted siblings joined him, and they stood silently in the big square, paying their brother a last tribute.

 

*

 

After one last glance back, Erwin scooted back inside the forest, climbing the highest he could to see the other tributes arriving. Soon after, the metallic arm of the hovercraft was back, slowly undertaking its morbid task. Erwin watched as Levi’s small body was lifted in the air and disappeared in the mouth of the hovercraft. The young man felt angry. He didn’t want the Capitol to have Levi’s body. They didn’t deserve it.

Levi shouldn’t have died in the first place.

Erwin violently shook his head, wiping the thoughts away. He had to focus on what was happening right now.

He would have time to mourn later.

His heart sent another painful pang, but Erwin gritted his teeth and angrily focused on scanning his surroundings. The night was getting dark, and he was afraid to miss the other tributes. Fortunately, the moon was bright in the sky, offering him a decent view on everything within a good radius.

He heard leaves and clothes crease somewhere beneath, and branches crack under solid shoes. Soon, the two Careers from 4 appeared on the beach and stopped near the pool of blood still making a dark stain against the pale sand. They had barely started talking to each other that the Anthem suddenly filled the night, making them jump in surprise. The loud music rang in Erwin’s ears, and he felt his heart beat faster. It would be the last time the sky would light up with dead tributes’ faces.

District 10 female. District 1 male. District 1 female.

District 12 male.

Levi’s ghostly picture seemed to be looking straight at Erwin, and the boy closed his eyes, carving that last image of him in his eyes. He heard the two Careers starting talking with agitation, but he didn’t open his eyes.

A second later, the beach exploded in a firework of sand and flesh and blood.

 

And the 28th Hunger Games were over.

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I- I actually don't have anything to say in my defense. *heavy breathing*


	10. Chapter Nine

 

When Erwin exited the hovercraft taking him back to the Capitol, he had the surprise to find his parents waiting for him, their sober clothes contrasting with the flashy and bright ones the cheering crowd behind them was wearing. They both ran to him and pulled him in a tight hug, not trying to hide their tears, not even Mr Smith who always took pride in controlling his emotions. Erwin remembered how his parents had looked when they had visited him before his departure. They hadn’t cried back then, trying to give him as much strength as they could.

It seemed like an eternity ago.

 

His mentors welcomed him with few words, which suited him perfectly. Erwin didn’t have a very warm relation with them, but they still smiled slightly at him, and one of them even told him that he did well. The young man knew that they were thinking more about what had happened with Annie than about his actual victory. After that, his prep team shoved him in a chair and started whimpering about how the nasty scars on his face would probably never disappear, but that they would find a way to hide them with make-up. Erwin immediately stopped them, saying that he wanted them to stay apparent. The team looked at him and then at each other in confusion, but didn’t protest, deciding that it gave him a certain style too. Erwin thanked them with a tired smile.

He didn’t want to look like he had gone away with ease.

He didn’t want to give the impression that the Games were just a phase of his life that was now over, opening him doors he had never ever hoped to even lay eyes on.

The Hunger Games were a monstrosity. He remembered snapping two tributes’ necks, back at the Cornucopia. Two young and fragile necks who hadn’t wanted to be there, not anymore than he had.

The Games turned a bunch of innocent kids clinging at life with all their will into monsters. Monsters fighting and killing each other for a chance of getting out, for the pleasure of idle rich people who had no idea what life was really like out there in the districts.

 

That evening, Erwin felt rage silently boiling in his veins when he watched the recollection of the most intense moments of the Games on one of the Capitol’s giant screens. He felt violated when they showed some of his and Levi’s most intimate moments. And he felt completely broken when Levi died, again, and his own face appeared on the screen, features deformed by pain and sorrow. He hadn’t even been aware that he had made such a face. The audience whispered, some of them took a handkerchief out and wiped their eyes.

The emotions Erwin had managed to contain so far started leaking back, and he had to dig his nails in his palms to keep himself from doing something very stupid like starting screaming and yelling at the public. From the corner of his eyes, the young man caught the closest people looking at him, studying his reaction, and he refused to meet their eyes. They could see that he was mourning. But he wasn’t going to let them enjoy anything more.

 

Later, the show host asked him about what he felt about Levi’s death, and Erwin just stared back at him blankly with rock hard eyes. The man instantly got the message, and apologized for his insensitivity, and assured him that he, as well as everyone, understood that Erwin didn’t want to talk about this for the moment. He then changed the topic and started questioning him about what he was planning to do in the future. District 2 already had a fair share of mentors, was Erwin then going to resume his training as a Peacekeeper? Or enjoy the pleasures the Capitol had to offer him as a Victor?

“I am sure that everyone is already sending you invitations to their parties, aren’t I right?” the host laughed, then proceeded in naming a few people and winked at the public, making them laugh.

Erwin stayed silent a long moment, absently tapping his fingers on his thigh, the host’s jokes and the audience’s reactions fading in the background of his mind. He had been pondering something since the hovercraft had left the arena, taking him away from that nightmare. He could hide and just enjoy a peaceful and plenty life with his parents. He could spend the rest of his days in bright clothes and bet on the next Hunger Games, and even be a sponsor himself.

Or he could stand up and try to make a difference.

 “I would like to become a mentor for District 12, if it’s possible,” he replied quietly. And then louder and looking straight at the host’s surprised face and slowly hovering his eyes over the silent public: “You all know that if it wasn’t for me, Levi would have won the Games. Besides, I only spent three years in 2. My heart is still in 12.” He tried not to linger on the double meaning the last part had. “12 is still my home,” he added in a whisper. After a moment, the audience started producing a general “ooooh”, and the show host assured him with frenzy that yes, he was a Victor now, the President sure would grant his wish, wouldn’t he?

The rest of the interview then went by smoothly, with the green-haired man basically making most of the conversation, and Erwin just nodding politely and flashing a fake smile from time to time at him and the audience.

           

When night came and he was back in the large room a servant had taken him into, the young man sat on the ridiculously soft bed and stared for a very long time at the wall. He was going back to 2 the next morning, to gather his stuff and say goodbye to his friends. He had already started the official procedure to move his parents to the Capitol; they had been receiving non-stop demands from very rich people since the moment he had blown his last opponents away, everyone wanting to have something from the Smiths’ shop.

Erwin was glad that his victory was at least helping them, and he allowed himself to linger a bit on that thought, trying to picture his father’s most probable face at seeing the ridiculously long list of commands. He chuckled softly at the mental image.

And then another thought crossed his mind, piercing through his heart like a poisonous blade.

 

Levi would never know that he made it out of the arena.

 

And that was just the straw that broke the camel’s back.

Everything he had carefully put away suddenly rushed back with a vengeance, drowning him and making him gap for air. He felt tears starting to roll down his cheeks, unstoppable flow of despair and sorrow; and the next thing he knew, he was standing near the glass window, the fresh air of the night slipping in the room via the hole he had made in its smooth surface. Blood was slowly dripping from his knuckles and from the broken glass, but he didn’t feel anything. He stared at the hole and the cracks drawing a web around it, at the scarlet drops lazily going down the window, ever under the influence of gravity. And then the hole was suddenly above his head, and he collapsed on his knees, in the middle of tiny bits of shiny glass. He heard the door opening and closing behind him and the crease of a dress wiping on the floor; and two seconds later his mother’s strong arms were around his shoulders, pulling him against her, slowly starting rocking him back and forth.

“Erwin, oh my little Erwin…” The young man noticed distantly that her warm voice was unusually low and shaking, and he leaned back against his mother, just like when he was a kid and could still be carried around in her arms. He could feel her warm breath on his cheek, and her heart beating strong and fast in her chest. Erwin slowly turned around, meeting her ocean-blue eyes, noticing the wrinkles that had appeared next to them, and rested his head on her shoulder without a word. He felt his mother’s hand softly stroking his hair, humming the old lullaby she always sang to make him sleep when he was young.

“He’s gone,” Erwin let out in a gasp, “he’s gone.” But his eyes stayed desperately dry, all the water seemingly already gone from his body, and he stared right in front of him, at nothing. Elena didn’t reply, and just pulled him closer, keeping on humming and cradling him. Through his clouded mind, Erwin thought that he heard footsteps behind the door, but no one came in. He thought he heard his father’s voice at some point too, but maybe it was just a dream.

Maybe everything was just a dream.

His eyes slowly closed, and he fell into a red-tainted sleep.

 

*

 

As soon as Erwin put a foot inside the Training School, everyone stopped and turned to stare at him. He slowly hovered his eyes over the dozens of trainees assembled in the hall, recognizing a few faces and mostly just wanting to punch them. But the violent urge just died away as quickly as it had appeared, and he stared blankly at the group of young people who had sent him to die in the arena. He didn’t even feel any satisfaction at having survived and shoving this fact in their faces.

“Erwin!” a voice suddenly broke the heavy silence. And soon, Hanji’s face appeared, pushing people aside without much gentleness to get to the front of the crowd. “Jeez, what’s with all these scars? Such a shame for a pretty face like yours,” the scientist then exclaimed with a frown, grabbing Erwin’s face and turning it from left to right, before letting him go and wrapping a pair of long arms around him and pulling him in a friendly hug, almost as if they had just seen each other the day before.

“It’s good to see you again,” Erwin heard Hanji whisper, and he couldn’t help but smile.

“Yeah, you too,” he replied with honesty. The eccentric researcher’s energy was refreshing, and he felt like that he needed things like this right now.

“My my my, look at who’s back,” another familiar voice then chuckled, accompanied by a whistle. Hanji pushed away, and barely after Nanaba was pulling Erwin in a bear hug.

“Ready to get your ass owned again in the shooting room?” she asked with a smug smile. Erwin laughed, and the young lady grinned, obviously happy of her effect. Erwin then looked up and met Mike’s eyes behind her, and the giant’s lips were showing just the faintest hint of a smile, which was already good enough for Erwin. He nodded at the tall man, and the other nodded back. The crowd around them hadn’t moved, and Erwin could almost physically feel their indecision.

“Oh, fuck this!” he suddenly heard Nile exclaim somewhere, and soon after the man was by his side, quickly followed by the whole assembly of poor district guys who friendly clapped his shoulders, congratulating him loudly. After a short minute of hesitation, a few trainees shyly stepped forward, soon joined by others, and then others and others. The hall exploded in cheers and clapping, and everyone wanted to land a good slap on Erwin’s poor back. From the corner of his eyes, the young man saw a group of trainees leaving the room, glaring at him with murderous eyes. He sighed inside, but decided that he would deal with this later. And then he suddenly gasped, feeling people grabbing his legs and arms, and he soon found himself thrown in the air, and landing back in the crowd’s arms who sent him back up again, dozens of people chanting his name every time. He could hear everyone laughing, and for a brief moment, the nightmare of the arena seemed to fade in the back of his mind.

 

*

 

“I’ll talk to them.”

Erwin barely paused, acknowledging Nile’s presence by the door. He could still hear the distant sound of the improvised party going on downstairs. He clearly remembered a line in the Code they all agreed to in exchange of their trainee uniform that strictly forbade any form of celebration within the School’s walls; but apparently, the simple fact that he was a Victor had thrown the rule out the window, at least for that day.

“You’re leaving anyway, so they don’t really have a reason to still be jealous,” Nile went on.

“I’m a Victor, how could they be more jealous?” Erwin replied with a sarcastic laugh.

Nile sighed, and leaned back on the opened door. A comfortable silence fell between them, and Erwin resumed folding his clothes without looking at the other man.

“You need some help?” Nile offered after a moment. Erwin pondered for a few seconds, and then gestured at the suitcase opened on the floor, revealing at least a hundred neatly folded letters decorated with multi-coloured ribbons. His Escort had handed him the case with a large smile before he had got in the train, telling him that he was already an idol in the Capitol, and that everyone wanted to have their special time with him. A cold shiver had gone down his spine thinking about what that was supposed to mean, but Erwin didn’t really want any detail either.

“If you could go through all these and tell me what they say,” he replied, hiding a smirk. The immediate reaction didn’t disappoint him.

“What the fuck do you think I am? Your secretary?” Nile exploded. Erwin shot him a pointed look, and Nile produced a ridiculous gurgle before sighing heavily and falling on the blond boy’s bed, leaning forward to grab a stack of letters.

“What are these anyway?” he grumbled, mercilessly tearing one open. He then stayed silent for a few seconds, eyes scanning down the neat and flowery words. “Are you sure you want to know what they say?” Nile finally asked, deadpanned. Erwin looked at him, trying to see if he was joking or not.

“Shock me,” he replied blankly after a short while.

“Then read it yourself!” Nile exclaimed, throwing the paper at him. Erwin dodged the letter, but didn’t expect Nile to follow, and he suddenly ended on his back, furiously kicking the air to make the older man let him go. Which he obviously didn’t, and just pinned him down a bit more.

And all of a sudden it wasn’t Nile anymore, but the Career from 1 looking down at him, a knife in his hand, ready to end his life in blood. Erwin wasn’t sure what exactly he did, but a second later the pressure on his chest and arms was gone, and he was shaking, taking loud and difficult breaths.

“I – I’m sorry Erwin, I didn’t want to –” he heard Nile stammering, somewhere above him. “Do you want me to bring you something?” the man then asked helplessly. Erwin shook his head, and after a moment, managed to regain an approximately normal breathing. He sat up completely, and Nile was kneeling next to him, but not daring touching him. Erwin could see genuine worry in his eyes, and he tried to smile comfortingly at him.

“It’s okay. I’m okay,” he said, breath still a little short.

“I’m sorry,” the older man repeated, truly apologetic, and Erwin just made a vague gesture with his hand to tell him that he was fine. They stayed silent for a moment, then Erwin slowly stood up and resumed tidying his things, carefully putting them in his old suitcase. Nile silently followed him and sat on his bed, glancing at him and nervously folding and unfolding his fingers.

“Hey, tell me about what happened here when I was gone,” Erwin eventually asked. The older man shot him a grateful look, and shifted slightly, looking for a way to begin.

“Well, you know, we had to watch the Games like everyone else as usual,” Nile finally sighed. “And whenever you appeared they just glared at everyone, and everyone was too afraid to cheer for you. And they checked everything, and woe to the one who dared betting on you.”

Erwin looked at him, processing what he had just said. It wasn’t that surprising, thinking about it, but it still left a bitter taste in the boy’s mouth, being reminded of how much some people hated him. Nile met his eyes, but quickly turned his gaze away.

“I knew you would win Erwin, but I just couldn’t take the risk, you know, for my family…” he muttered.

“Don’t worry, I understand,” the blond boy replied with a comforting smile. “Speaking of your family, how are they?”

Erwin could see that Nile was grateful again for the change of topic, and he spent the next minutes listening to his friend telling him how his eldest sister had brought her boyfriend home and that his mother didn’t like him a bit and how it had made a big scene at home, how his father had almost kicked the poor lad out, and the couple had ended sleeping in his room, which had been all kind of awkward and embarrassing. Erwin laughed, thinking about the scenes, and they settled into a comfortable silence until Erwin finally closed the lid of his suitcase with a click.

“Well,” he started, but Nile put a hand on his arm, stopping him. The blond boy froze and looked at him, waiting for him to speak. Nile opened and closed his mouth a few times, hesitating, before finally setting for something.

“You know, I’m aware that you and me, it wasn’t really anything more than teenagers fooling around, and I know that, you and… you know, er…” he started, blatantly looking at everything but Erwin. After a short silence, he sighed, and tentatively looked up at the blond boy. “But I’ll be here if you ever need me,” he finished, and Erwin could almost see a heavy weight lift from Nile’s shoulders. He stared at him blankly for a moment, unsure of what to say. And he noticed that even though his gaze made Nile shift nervously on his bed, the other man didn’t divert his eyes.

“Thank you, Nile,” Erwin finally answered earnestly, a soft smile on his lips. “You are a great friend.”

The dark-haired man sighed and chuckled lightly, but the message was clear. Whatever they previously had was over. There wouldn’t be late-night sneaking out and awkward cuddling in the dark anymore.

“Well, will you let me come with you to the station?” Nile asked after a short silence. Erwin smiled and nodded, and Nile grabbed the heavy full of letters suitcase, quietly following him out. They were joined by Nanaba, Mike and Hanji who were waiting outside, and they silently walked towards the station, the afternoon sun warming them nicely. They helped him get his suitcases on board even if an employee rushed to take them, and waved him goodbye until they turned into tiny points in the horizon. Erwin looked back for a long time, watching the station’s tall building disappear, and then the Gates with a big “District 2” on it.

He looked for a long time over the rear window, the ghost image of the Training School he had spent three years of his life in lingering in his eyes.

And then he turned back and settled comfortably on his seat, and another page of his life was over.

 

*

 

Erwin went back to the Capitol and stayed there until his parents were comfortably settled in their new house. Their moving had attracted a lot of journalists, and everyone was complaining that the house was sooo small, which quite puzzled Erwin because he thought that the building already had pretty fair dimensions. His mother stuck to her position, and refused any offer of finding them a bigger house, let alone providing them with servants. Erwin once heard her mumbling something like “no way am I living with an army of servants, these people are crazy”, and the boy felt obliged to point out that the crazy people would now be her neighbours, which brought a very funny expression on Elena’s regal features. But both of them soon burst out laughing, which attracted Anthony who looked at them in confusion, wondering what exactly he had missed. Erwin then suddenly extended an arm and wrapped it around his father’s shoulder, his other arm around his mother’s, and pulled them both in a family hug with a large cheerful grin. It confused the man even more, but he wasn’t going to say no to one of his son’s rare signs of affection.

Especially after what had happened to him.

Anthony Smith wasn’t a blind man, nor an insensitive one. Sometimes, the memories of some things he had said when his son was only a little boy came back to his mind, and he couldn’t help but feel sick, sick at himself for having ever expressed the wish of seeing Erwin volunteering. He could see what the Games had done to him, how Erwin sometimes just stopped for no reason and stared out at thin air. He had heard him crying and throwing everything that was within reach that night after his return. He had always known that there was something between his son and Levi, something clearly beyond friendship, but he hadn’t expected it to be so strong. So pure.

Neither he nor Elena ever told him to get over Levi and move on. They just provided him with their support, telling him that if he ever needed a haven to rest in, their door would always be opened for him, no matter the day, no matter the hour. And that if they were out for some reason, he had a double of the key anyway. Erwin smiled and thanked them, and the couple felt deeply angry and helpless for not being able to do anything more. But their son assured them that it was enough, and that he couldn’t ask more from them.

 

During the few days of his stay, Erwin started growing links with people in the Capitol. It wasn’t very hard though, they were all buzzing around him like insects around a fire. He smiled and joked, and asked questions. Very insignificant questions, but that told him more about the game of power raging in the Capitol than a book would have. He learned who the important players were, the names of the ones who didn’t look like much but were still dangerous, and went to their parties where he was welcome with open arms; everyone wanted to be seen with Erwin Smith. Once, an ageing lady came to him and said that they knew each other, that Erwin had met her when he was still a child and that he must remember her? The young man looked closely at her for a few seconds and then flashed a bright smile, of course he remembered her, how could he forget Ruby Snow and her famous scarlet hair? The lady laughed, pleased, and started pulling him by the sleeve to a table covered by colourful and abundant food. She introduced him with a proud grin to her son, a tall and elegant man in his late twenties who studied Erwin with an unnerving look when they shook hands.

“Tell me Erwin, what would you think of becoming President?” Coriolanus whispered, a strange smile on his lips. Erwin felt like his icy eyes were drilling inside of him, turning everything upside down to find all his most intimate secrets, and cold sweat started forming in his back. He gulped silently, and forced a laugh out of his throat.

“Me? No, honestly, politics don’t really interest me,” Erwin chuckled back, his heart beating madly in vague dread. The man just nodded absently, dropping a quiet “I see” before stating that it had been a pleasure to meet the Victor, and excused himself. His mother swiftly apologized for his behaviour, saying that her son was overworking himself. “He wants to become President, can you believe that?” she laughed, and Erwin felt forced to laugh with her, even if his brief encounter with the man had left a very cold weight in his stomach. He had the feeling that wasn’t a man he wanted to become an enemy of.

He felt sick.

Pretexting a sudden headache, Erwin excused himself and slipped outside, walking with quick steps until he reached his house. As soon as he was inside, the young man closed the door with the hurry of someone who was pursued by some horrible monster, and leaned heavily on the polished wood. His heart was beating madly, as if Coriolanus Snow’s cold eyes were still on him. And suddenly, he felt like he was ten again, looking up in fear at the painted people of the Capitol, afraid that they would eat him and spit him back into a dark horrible place. He saw his mother step closer to him, worry all over her face, and he blurted out that he was bringing forward his departure to District 12 and that he was leaving the next morning. Elena looked surprised, but she didn’t protest, and simply asked if he needed help preparing his luggage. Erwin slowly shook his head, and pulled away from the door he had slumped against, walking upstairs to his room on shaky legs, the icy eyes still carved in his brain.

 

The next morning, Erwin slipped in the hovercraft the President had put at his disposal for his journey, fortunately without attracting too much attention. As the plane slowly rose in the summer sky, the shiny buildings of the Capitol disappeared behind him. And with them, the young man felt like a heavy weight lifted from his shoulders, and his brief encounter with Coriolanus Snow faded away in the back of his mind.

He was going back to District 12.

 

He was going home.

 

 


	11. Chapter Ten

 

When the hovercraft landed in the middle of the central square, the new mayor stepped forward to welcome Erwin warmly. He declared that it didn’t matter if his victory still counted for 2, a boy from their district had won the Games, and he was very proud of it. The man then apologized for the fact that he unfortunately couldn’t let him use one of the houses in the Victors’ Village, but he had made sure that Erwin was provided with an equally comfortable one. And how were Mr and Mrs Smith by the way? The blond boy just smiled with tiredness at the mayor who hastened to apologize again, and said that yes Erwin must be very tired of his journey and it was very understandable, and asked his sons if they could carry his suitcases as they walked him to his new house. The two twins complied and rushed to grab the blonde’s luggage, trotting back and looking at him, obvious admiration in their young eyes. Erwin thanked them with a smile, and the boys just looked like they had been graced by the presence of a god, their little shiny eyes making the young man’s heart sink with sadness; they couldn’t be more than fifteen. One of them then started bombarding him with questions about the Games, but his father hushed him quickly.

“They admire you a lot,” the mayor laughed nervously, telling his sons not to bother Erwin with their questions. The young man replied that it was okay, but made it clear that he didn’t want to be questioned for the moment. They walked in silence to his new house, a two-floor building that had obviously been recently repainted, and the mayor asked him if he needed help to get his luggage inside. Erwin declined politely, and thanked them again for their welcome and help. The mayor then suggested that he came for tea the day after, and Erwin accepted, glancing at the twins’ expectant faces, and it brought a large grin on the man and his two sons’ lips. They then turned away and left him, standing in front of the empty house. Erwin somehow didn’t feel any hurry to get inside, just looking at the walls and the windows, as if waiting for something.

“You are back.”

The young man slowly turned, and there was Armin, staring at him with his big blue eyes, pressing a book against his chest. Erwin noticed that it was one of the few he had given the boy, so long ago, and a warm fondness settled in his heart. And then he looked up, and all the kids were standing a few meters behind, silently eyeing him. Erwin felt his heart beat speed up slightly, and he tried to read their blank expressions; but they were too far away, and it didn’t really help him to find a correct way to react. He had been looking forward and dreading this moment at the same time, and couldn’t have helped but tried to plan the encounter.

Just like he had tried to plan his reunion with Levi. His heart clenched painfully.

“I’m back,” Erwin then finally whispered back after a moment, his voice quietly flying away in the afternoon air. And before he could react, Armin’s little arms were around his waist, and his small face was pressing against his chest, tears flowing down from his eyes.

“You’re back,” he repeated, and Erwin knew that it wasn’t just a statement over his physical presence.

He was back. He had survived the Games, not only physically, but mentally. He knew that both sides were scarred for life, but he survived, without losing the most important thing.

Without losing his humanity.

Without losing his will to live.

Soon, all the kids were around him, crying and telling him how much they had missed him, and how glad they were that he was back. No one talked about Levi, and Erwin didn’t press the subject. He knew that it would come eventually, but for now, he just smiled and enjoyed the moment.

 

He survived, and he was back.

 

*

 

A few days later, the little gang had moved with him, leaving their old lair to the warm memories they had enjoyed there, like some sort of sanctuary no one dared to enter again. Some of them were fascinated by the simple fact that there was a second floor in Erwin’s new house, and more importantly, _stairs._ An hour couldn’t pass without Erwin hearing loud thuds on the wooden steps, and even if he tried to tell them to be careful, it took Connie to twist his ankle for them to finally calm down. Life was going by peacefully, the sun of the end of summer nicely warming them when they were playing outside.

 

One night, Erwin woke up with a jolt at Mikasa silently staring at him from his bedside. The girl barely reacted when he gasped at her, a hand above his heart, trying to calm down.

“God, Mikasa, I’m an old man now, have a little consideration for my poor heart,” he laughed after a short silence, the beating slowing down to a normal pace. The young girl didn’t comment, and just climbed on his bed and sat at the edge, her legs folded under her, eyes facing the door.

“Brother loved you a lot,” she quietly stated. Erwin’s heart jumped again, but not because of surprise this time. He had wondered when this conversation would happen, and was actually surprised it had taken so long.

It didn’t mean he was anything close to ready, though.

“I know,” he simply replied, knowing that the girl wasn’t really expecting an elaborate answer anyway.

“You loved him too,” she went on, and Erwin nodded. Mikasa turned toward him, silently locking eyes with him. Her pupils were shining softly in the moonlight leaking through the curtains, and they reminded him of Levi’s, of Levi’s eyes under the silver rays of the moon, ghostly and beautiful.

The blond boy’s heart suddenly felt terribly heavy.

“Do you still love him?” Mikasa then softly asked, not breaking eye contact. Erwin didn’t reply immediately, lowering his eyes and reporting them on his hands. A slightly paler line was standing out on his right hand’s back, the pemanent trace of that time he had cut himself on the vicious thorns a tree was hiding. He had been lucky it hadn’t been poisonous.

“I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to stop one day,” the young man replied, barely more than a whisper. It was true. He had never really truly addressed his feelings for Levi; somehow, it had always just come to him naturally. He had been drawn to the wildfire burning in him. And then he had discovered that softer part of him, that part that cared about others and cared too much. And he had started looking forward more and more to their encounters, and had felt sad every time they split up.

And then he had kissed him, and Levi hadn’t pulled away.

Now, it would be naïve to think that he wasn’t going to meet other people he would be attracted to, people he would have an indescribable relationship with, just like he had with Nile. But even if it happened, he knew that deep down, it would always be Levi, and only Levi.

Mikasa suddenly grabbed his hand, and put something small and cold in it.

“Petra gave it to brother when she was reaped. She said that it brought luck, and brother gave it to me before leaving. But I want you to have it.”

Erwin looked down at the golden pin, the memories of seeing Petra and Gunther’s Reaping pushing themselves to the front of his mind. The First Quarter Quell had led to some sort of horrible and macabre campaign from the Careers in 1, 2 and 4, all of them wanting to be “elected” for the Games. But Erwin had heard of what happened in the other districts, and he could only imagine too well what sort of sick atmosphere it must have created out there. He had been worried about 12 for long weeks, but when he had finally seen the Reaping on the giant screen, he knew that his District hadn’t gone through it. That 12 had been saved by these two brave children, these two selfless children who sacrificed themselves so parents wouldn’t have to mourn their little ones that year at home.

Just like how Levi had given his life to make sure that Erwin’s own parents wouldn’t have to mourn him.

“Did it bring him luck?” Erwin asked with a small bitter laugh, eyeing the pin strangely. Mikasa looked at him for a moment, then jumped off the bed, barely making any noise.

“It brought you back to him,” she simply replied, and left the room without another word. Erwin followed her with slightly surprised eyes, and kept on staring at the wooden door after she closed it behind her. He then looked down at the pin again, and softly traced the round edge of the mocking jay’s head with his thumb.

“Can you bring him back to me?” he asked the bird. The pin just shined softly in the dim light without answering his prayer.

 

*

 

Winter came, and with it the Victory Tour knocked at Erwin’s door. His Escort wanted him to go back to District 2 for the preparation, but he just glared at her via the video device, and she let it go with a sigh, stating that they would have to begin by 12 anyway.

And suddenly, the poor district was full of life with his prep team and the media crews buzzing in the streets, startling everyone coming to get a closer look. District 12 had never seen a Victor preparing for their Tour, even if they almost did, and the kids were very excited by the event. Except for Bertholdt, who just locked himself upstairs and refused to come out. But after a long conversation through the door, Reiner eventually managed to make him at least get a peek, telling him that it wasn’t something he was going to see every day. The tall boy emerged a moment later from the room with the darkest and least convinced look ever, and reluctantly walked to the stairs with heavy steps, took a look, and stayed there for a long time, gaping. A journalist then spotted him, and suddenly a dozen set of eyes were on him, and Bertholdt started sweating nervously, trying to step back slowly. He bumped into Reiner though, and the brawny boy just gently pushed him forward again, a comforting smile on his lips and telling him that he was there. Bertholdt wasn’t completely convinced, but he still let himself being led downstairs, and he felt Reiner’s hand slip in his, soothing him with his thumb. The gesture didn’t escape the media, and they all started speaking at the same time, which scared the shy boy and made him want to back away at once again. But Reiner’s grip was firm on his hand, and he seemed to be handling the situation perfectly. From the other side of the room, Erwin couldn’t help but smile softly, watching Bertholdt gradually relaxing and even answering a few questions with a shy smile after a moment. Levi was right, the boy was already taller than him. Not by a lot, but still taller. But what had surprised Erwin even more when he had come back and got a closer look at the gang was the ridiculous amount of muscles Reiner had somehow grown on him. Like, where did these come from? Erwin knew that the boy had started working at the mine, but he was also sure that even this couldn’t make such a quantity of muscles just pop out. And as stupid as it was, this wonder of nature never failed to puzzle him.

           

After a couple of very agitated days, Erwin was eventually tugged in a perfectly fit marine-blue suit and sent to the square with an army of cameras buzzing around him, broadcasting his carefully groomed hair everywhere in the country. He walked to the front of the scene and stopped in front of the mic, taking a long look at his surroundings. On both sides of the place, Mina and Levi’s giant pictures were looking at him in silence, Mina’s parents and little brother standing at his right, Mikasa and her three little cousins on his left. He looked at each of them, his heart beating loudly in his ears.

“Everyone knows that without Mina and Levi, I would have died the first night of the Games,” Erwin started slowly, his deep voice echoing against the houses surrounding the place. “Despite her young age, Mina has been brave, braver than anyone could have expected of her. She didn’t run in front of death, and chose to live not in fear like a tracked animal, but with courage and bravery. She saved my life.” He paused and slightly bowed at the girl’s picture and her family standing in front of it. The young man could tell that the three of them were crying, and his own throat tied in a knot in reaction, painful memories threatening to overwhelm him again. He had to clench his fists to keep his voice from shaking, and took a deep breath before continuing. “She left us with dignity and without pain, a death worthy of a hero, and she shall be remembered as such.” Erwin then caught Mina’s father close his eyes and nod at him gratefully, a small smile on his lips, and the boy nodded back with respect. “As for Levi…” his voice trailed off, and he looked at the raven-haired boy’s moving picture staring back at him. And for a brief second, he had the feeling that Levi was really there, watching him and softly smiling at him. “I promised that I wouldn’t fail him, and I won’t.” He felt like his mind projection of Levi nodded, satisfied. And then the illusion was gone, and he painfully tore his gaze away from the screen to focus back on the audience. “Mina and Levi chose to put my life above their own. I didn’t, still don’t, and probably will never deserve it. But I can promise you, with all my heart, that I will do everything I can to show myself worthy of their sacrifices. They didn’t die in vain.” His voice broke at the last syllabus, thinking that neither of them would ever know that he was still alive, that they had achieved their goal and got him out of the arena. “Thank you,” he whispered and stepped back from the micro, the device carrying his words away like a warm breeze. Silence was complete in the square, the winter wind hushing down to a quiet breath in this solemn instant. But after a few seconds, the sound of thick clothes rustling rose in the morning air; and throughout the whole country, everyone saw District 12’s people slowly raising their hands, faces solemn and looking straight in front of them, paying a last tribute to their lost ones.

 

Somewhere in the Capitol, Ruby Snow was wiping tears out of her eyes, babbling with a broken voice about how intense and emotional the speech was. Next to her, her son Coriolanus stared wordlessly at the blond boy on stage, his hand gripped so tight around his glass of wine that it was a miracle that it hadn’t broken in pieces yet.

 

*

 

One year passed after another, and every time, the tributes Erwin mentored died. Thomas. Hannah. Franz. Samuel. But all of them fought bravely until the very end, and as painful as it was, Erwin always paid a visit to their families afterwards. Some of them blamed him for their child’s death and slammed the door in his face, but most of them offered him hot tea or whatever they had to offer, and the young man listened to them recollecting their memories of their passed away kid. They thanked him for coming by, saying that knowing that someone cared helped them get through their grief. Erwin always gave them a warm smile and told them that if they needed anything, they could come to him and he would try his best. Very few of them actually solicited him later, but when they did he always tried to help them the best he could. It was the only thing he could do.

 And it made him feel utterly powerless.

 

Four years after his return, Reiner was reaped for the 32nd Hunger Games. Erwin felt his heart sink to the depths of hell, but he felt it freeze in shock before literally shattering when Bertholdt’s shy voice rose, volunteering in the blond boy’s place. The look on Reiner’s face was completely heart-wrenching to watch, and Erwin hadn’t been able to stand it, shamefully turning his eyes away. Later on the train, Bertholdt told him that he was truly happy, happy to have been able to pay back at least a small amount of everything the brawny boy had done for him. “You know,” he said, “I always felt that I didn’t really belong there, that I was keeping Reiner from really being happy. But he still kept on talking to me and helped me and told me that… that I was a good person.” Erwin stayed silent for a while. He knew Bertholdt’s story; he knew that the boy had killed someone for a load of bread when he was only a child. But he also knew that he had never forgiven himself for it, his guilt driving him to isolate himself from the others. “You _are_ a good person,” Erwin then declared, earnestly, looking in the boy’s eyes with conviction. Bertholdt shyly smiled at him, thanking him silently. “It doesn’t really matter anymore,” he whispered. “At least Reiner is safe now. It was his last Reaping.”

The girl tribute from 12 died in the Cornucopia’s bloodbath, but to everyone’s surprise, Bertholdt survived for a long time, revealing incredible survival and fight capacities he had never known he had. As the days passed, Erwin just couldn’t help that little flame called hope starting to grow inside of him. He urged sponsors to send him gifts, a seductive smile seemingly never leaving his lips, his heart constantly beating at a mad pace. Once, he thought he saw Levi leaning against a wall, silently watching him trying to save his adopted little brother. Erwin blinked and he was gone, but the illusion still revived his determination of getting the tall boy back home.

A few days later, Bertholdt died in the fight against the last survivor. Erwin could only watch helplessly as the Career girl from 1 took advantage of her small size to jump on the boy’s back, making him trip and fall on his stomach. And before Bertholdt could react, she took her knife out and dug it in the nape of his neck, killing him on the spot.

           

When Erwin went back to District 12, Reiner looked at him with an empty smile, saying that he was proud of Bertholdt, and that at least he had died quickly. But the brawny boy’s hollow eyes didn’t fool anyone, and certainly not Erwin. He could also see that everyone was deeply affected by Bertholdt’s death, and it just made it worse, made him want to cry out at how unfair it was. Bertholdt had always felt unloved and useless. But Erwin had seen how the tall boy had started truly going out of his shell the past four years, since the moment he had found out that some people who didn’t even know him thought that he was worthy of their time. Maybe a little more, and he would have started to thrive.

But now it was too late.

Bertholdt had discovered the extent of his capacities only to die. Another brave existence wasted away.

Erwin hadn’t felt so angry and helpless for a long time.

He hadn’t felt so angry and helpless for four years.

 

When night came and he knew that the house was asleep, Erwin took out the little box he was keeping under his pillow and slowly opened it. The golden mocking jay shined softly, still looking as good as it was all those years ago.

 _It brings luck,_ Mikasa had said.

Suddenly feeling rage overwhelm him, Erwin snapped the pin out of the box and threw it from his window as far as he could, watching it fall in the shadows of the street. He then closed the curtains with an air of finality and went to sleep.

The next morning at dawn, Erwin was scouting the nearby streets for the golden pin, his heart beating madly. He had thrown the jewel away in a fit, but no matter how its supposedly fortune bringing power wasn’t working at all for him, it was still the last thing he had left from Levi.

The thought of the boy made his heart throb painfully, and Erwin had to lean against a wall, his head heavy in his hands; it had been four years, and the pain still took him by surprise. After a moment, he slowly righted himself, and stared helplessly at the dusty floor. He had scanned every square centimetre of the street he had clearly seen the pin fall in, and even the neighbouring ones just in case. And nothing.

It was just gone.

And Erwin felt like that some part of him had disappeared along the pin, leaving a gaping hole behind.

“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,” he whined in a breath, not really knowing who he was apologizing to, maybe to Levi’s angry ghost in case he was listening. He then realized that this thought was ridiculous, and couldn’t help some sort of hybrid mutant between a sob and a laugh escaping his mouth. Levi would have laughed at him, if he were there.

_Levi…_

Erwin slowly turned away, a heavy weight in his stomach, and started walking back to his house. The pin was gone, he had to accept it. Maybe had it found a new owner, and he just hoped that they would have more luck than he had.

 

A few houses away, a young man was definitely thinking that he was lucky, admiring the golden pin shining in the rising sun light. He had seen it while going out to fetch some water, and had looked around in confusion, wondering who could have lost it, expecting someone to accost him and tell him that it was theirs and demand it back. He obviously would have complied if it was the case, his parents having always told him not to steal; but no one came, and he hesitantly brought it back home.

The young man quickly hid the jewel behind his back when he heard his wife slowly getting up and appearing in the door frame, a hand on her round belly. He smiled brightly and bounced to her, not a bit unfazed by her raised eyebrow.

“I have a surprise for you,” he announced cheerfully, and felt his heart explode from happiness when he saw the young lady’s face light up at the sight of the golden pin.

“Oh my, where did you find this?” she asked, her eyes still full of amazement. The young man shrugged.

“It was on the floor, I just picked it up. I swear, I didn’t steal it!” he added with a laugh when his wife shot him a suspicious look.

“Maybe someone is missing it right now,” the young lady wondered, worried. Her husband shrugged again.

“Well, they didn’t have to lose it the first place, right?”

She looked at him for a while, unconvinced, but finally sighed and let it go.

“If you say so.”

The lad beamed at her, and leaned forward to kiss her gently, softly placing a hand on her belly.

“So, did you think about how we were going to call these two beautiful girls?”

His wife smiled and looked at him, eyes half close.

“How about we each name one?”

“Does it mean that you have one idea but not two?”

“Oh, shut up,” she laughed, lightly shoving her husband’s chest. “I was thinking of Maysilee.”

The young man repeated the name, rolling it on his tongue. Maysilee. It sounded good.

“I like it,” he said. “Maysilee Donner. Sounds great.”

And his wife just beamed back at him, and he had the feeling that the golden pin had brought good fortune with it in his house. He smiled at his pregnant wife and carefully pulled her in a hug.

“Our girls will be strong ones, just like their mom,” he said. And the young lady just chuckled back, resting her head on her husband’s shoulder, a hand softly stroking her round belly.

           

 


	12. Epilogue

 

Throughout the years, Erwin carefully maintained his contacts in the Capitol, reinforcing them and making new ones every time he went there. He befriended the other Victors, and found out that Career or not, more than one was truly bitter towards the Games, towards the whole system.

Erwin discovered a lot of things, things that would have him killed if it was known that he knew. But he kept on digging, deeper and deeper, pushed forward by an unstoppable rage. Once or twice he thought that he was found out, but he always managed to get away without raising too much suspicion.

And his tributes died one after the other, and every time it only reinforced his will to go on.

Until one day, twenty-two years after his Victory, District 12 had a new Victor. Haymitch Abernathy was a strong and smart lad, who won his way against forty-seven other tributes mostly thanks to his brain. Erwin had to say that the trick he pulled out with the magnetic field was pretty impressive, and he didn’t hesitate to tell the young man, who beamed back at him with a smug pride.

If he had to be honest, Haymitch really admired his mentor. Everyone knew about Erwin Smith’s story in District 12, he was a real legend; but meeting the man was a whole other thing, and Haymitch truly thought that the stories didn’t do him justice at all. They mostly talked about how he had lost the love of his life in the arena and had stayed loyal to him even after death, some soapy things like that. The Capitol loved this kind of stories, but it had bored Haymitch out of his mind.

The stories never told about how Erwin had manipulated his way in the heart of the Capitol, about how he was silently undermining the system’s basis, fighting the Capitol with the arms of the Capitol. Smiles. Manipulation. Deception. Haymitch was far from being stupid, and had seen it pretty quickly when he had observed how the man was in the intimacy of the train or of their floor in the Training Center, and how different he was when talking with important people at the parties that were thrown after the end of the Games.

When Haymitch confronted him on it, a few minutes before his return to District 12, Erwin frowned and studied him silently with his piercing blue eyes; and although some part of him shrieked in fear and wanted nothing more than galloping to a safe hole under the earth, Haymitch didn’t let himself being impressed. Which was apparently the right move, because Erwin suddenly laughed and leaned forward, telling the young lad that if he wanted to know more, he could wait for his return. Haymitch was far from being satisfied by the answer, but had to accept it anyway, and he got on the train, waving his mentor goodbye from the window. Erwin had told him that he had some important matters to deal with in the Capitol, but would come back as soon as possible.

 

Three days later, the federal channel reported Erwin’s death, and showed a lot of people crying over the regrettable accident that had happened to him. Haymitch stared at the screen, completely stunned, a bottle of fine wine in one hand, a glass in the other.

An accident.

Haymitch wasn’t stupid. It was a murder.

A political murder.

He watched as President Snow himself made a short speech, saying how he had had the pleasure to meet Erwin in person and how great the man was. He went on and on for a few minutes, praising Erwin’s loyalty to his dead lover until the very end, but then one of the sentences made Haymitch’s hairs stand up on his neck.

“How sad it is that he left us right after District 12 had a new Victor! Such a smart one, furthermore.”

And the President looked straight at the camera, as if he could see Haymitch, as if he could see the young man standing alone in his new living-room, fear rushing though his veins and heart beating madly in his chest.

“Hey, you okay?” Haymitch heard his little brother ask from the room’s doorstep. And he frantically turned towards him and stared at the boy with wide scared eyes, and quickly shooed him away, not caring about the confused and slightly frightened look the boy was giving him, just feeling a sudden urge to get him out from the President’s icy sight, even if it was just a recording, even if the fear making his heart want to jump out his chest was stupid. Later that night, Haymitch drank down the whole bottle of wine, hands still shaking from what he had seen on TV, Snow’s words resonating like a tolling bell in his mind.

Two weeks later, they were all dead.

His mother, his brother, his girlfriend.

And Haymitch just stopped caring, drinking one bottle after another, in the middle of the mess his living-room had become, not finding the will to clean it. Broken vases were scattered across the floor, along with knocked over furniture. His fury had died away quickly though, leaving his house in a mess behind it, leaving him himself in a mess behind it; and Haymitch just felt powerlessness viciously crushing him, making him both want to rip his hair out and cry miserably in a corner.

He wanted to do something, just like Erwin had taken his life in his hands and started his task, slowly but surely, not letting anything bring him down, not bowing in front anything other than what he had decided on his own. But Haymitch didn’t have his mentor’s charisma, and even if he could talk people into doing some things, he knew that it was far from being enough.

And Erwin was dead now.

 

A few months passed, and the Victory Tour happened in a blur of his prep team’s flashy colours and people staring at him with dark and sometimes even murderous eyes. And then a year passed by, and Haymitch somehow found himself standing in front of two young people, suddenly in charge of keeping them alive against all odds. He tried his best, but it just didn’t work out; and he wondered how Erwin had managed to go through this so many times without becoming completely insane. And then more years slipped into the past, slowly, endlessly. Haymitch sometimes let himself linger longer than he should on the option of taking his own life like District 12’s first Victor had, but every time, something kept him from acting, kept him from just bringing an end to his miserable life and let the world deal with its shit alone. It was the feeling that something big was going to happen, but he didn’t know what or when. He just knew that it was the same intuition that had saved his life in the arena, so he decided to give it a try.

And thinking back on it, Haymitch later realized that he just wasn’t ready to die yet; he never had been. And even if he felt like everything was falling apart, that an endless sleep would be a sweet treat compared to what he was going through, deep down, his body and heart knew better. He wanted to live. He wanted to leave a trace in this world, to be remembered as someone who had fought back, not as that guy who had given up and let go.

And even if people laughed at him and his alcohol-soaked breath, Haymitch was a fighter. And the same way as his mentor had made this vow so many years ago, something settled in the young man’s heart, firmly, decided, even if he himself wasn’t completely fully aware of it yet. Everyone died one day. Most just faded in quiet oblivion, others burned their trace on the page before leaving, their flame still shining in people’s memories long after their death.

And Haymitch was decided not to die like a trampled flower.

 

Ten years later, someone knocked at the young man’s door in the middle of the evening. Haymitch opened it and stood still at his doorstep, surprised to find a tall middle-aged man he didn’t know standing in front of him. The man introduced himself as Jean Kirschtein, and said that he was a friend of Erwin’s; and that it was time for Haymitch to know about what his former mentor had found, about what seeds he had planted and had since then been carefully cultivated by a group of devoted people, whose identities would be known of him when time came. The man then handed him a thick envelope, warning him to carefully burn it down once he had finished reading it. Haymitch wordlessly took the package, and Jean smiled at him.

“Keep it for yourself,” the sandy-haired man instructed. “People are not ready yet.”

Haymitch nodded numbly, and Jean turned away without another word, silently leaving the Victors’ Village. The blond man followed him with his eyes for a long time, until his strange visitor’s figure had completely disappeared in the shadows of the night, leaving his existence as quietly as he had entered it, as silently as a ghost.

           

That night, Haymitch stayed up very late, watching the papers burn in his fireplace. He crossed his legs, uncrossed them, crossed his fingers, stood up and walked a few laps around his living-room, and finally sat down again. And waited.

And waited for fourteen years.

 

On the eve of the 74th Hunger Games, a young girl went to visit her friend who had volunteered to save her little sister, and gave her a golden pin as a token of friendship. She said that it used to belong to her aunt, who also used to be Katniss’s mother’s best friend, and who died in the arena during the Second Quarter Quell. She made her promise that she would wear it in the arena, and Katniss promised.

 

And one year later, the golden mocking jay became the symbol of the Rebellion.

 

 

 

*

 

 

 

_It takes a lot of time and people to change History._

_I have assisted to a lot of things, and heard about even more._

_I have seen all my friends die one after the other, some of old age, some of disease, and even more executed. But they all told me their stories, and stories of other people I have never met, and maybe will I write theirs down one day as well. I am an old man now, but I hope that what I wrote is still legible. You know, I used to have a pretty good handwriting._

_The world is in peace now, and time to count our dead and mourn them has passed. But if you still have time for another story, please remember this one._

_Please remember the story of Levi and Erwin._

_Armin Arlert,_

              _82 ADD_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Soooo that's it. Thank you all for reading until the end, thanks to everyone who left kudos and comments or bookmarked my shit I fucking love you all asdipefhg <3  
> I hope you enjoyed this story until the end!
> 
> By the way, you can find me on tumblr [here](http://kitshunette.tumblr.com/) if you want to talk or just stare at me weirdly, whatever (try not to do the staring thing too much though, we might get stuck in a silent mutual staring forever)
> 
> So, thank you again for following this until the end, and I wish everyone good continuation on whatever you are doing or planning to do or don't know yet that you plan to do!
> 
> \- Kitshu


End file.
